


A Study In Crimson: The Press-Gang

by gardnerhill



Series: A Study In Crimson [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Crack, Gen, Pirate Sherlock, Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pirate AU. When Captain Shear-Lock goes trawling for new men to press-gang into his crew aboard the BAKER, he has no idea that the drunken Navy surgeon sprawled on the floor of a Tortuga tavern will change everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. CAPTAIN SHEAR-LOCK

"Ah, Stampf, good evening."

The new voice in the Dead Porpoise carried over the laughter, shouts and drunken singing; the clear, strong voice of a man who must make himself heard and understood across the length of a ship over a gale. Fat old Stampf didn't even need to address the man for me to know his rank. 

" _Mijn goede kapitein_! Come in, come in!" 

If I'd had an ounce of self-preservation at the time, I'd have scurried out of the tavern fast as one of the palm-rats that infested the place and who fought with us for the prime corners. The only reason any man with a hull between his boots and the sea comes into a place like this is to press new men aboard their vessels, in the grand style of the Royal Navy itself. I'd seen it on my last ship; men clubbed or threatened or made drunk who spent a stint in Hell working their hearts out for brutal men at the deadliest work in God's creation, risking their lives, kept compliant with grog at one end and the lash at the other. My last ship… 

The yellow oil lantern-light, hazy with tobacco-smoke, illuminated the man who stood before me, sprawled though I was in the corner with my former shipmate. I looked up into his face. And up. He looked like a whale-rib, tall and thin, with dark shoulder-length hair and a nose like a parrot's beak. His eyes did not leave me. 

Of course the other patrons had fled at the appearance of a ship's officer. Murray snored beside me, his head a heavy weight on my shoulder. I couldn't get up without dislodging him, and in my current state I wasn't able to shift him. Well, we were both in it then.

Cursing slowly, I groped about myself for my pistol and then remembered, through the fog that only a bottle of rum can cause, that I'd traded the one for the other. Murray had no pistol of his own, either; we'd traded that one for the previous bottle. But the tall bastard was alone; he wouldn't get me aboard his damn ship without a fight. 

"You were aboard the _Spider_ ," the tall man said. "You and your companion – a sailing expert – were among the few survivors of an open boat after the battle in which you sustained a leg wound. You are a former Royal Navy doctor who became sickened by the cruelty aboard your ship and suffered the consequences because you attempted to alleviate it. You have been trying to drink yourself to death ever since – quite unsuccessfully, I'm pleased to say. From the rock-steady way you are pointing that empty rum bottle at me despite your drunken state, you must be a formidable pistol-shot."

Stampf, the fat bastard, grinned his gold-toothed grin at me. I suspect that my face showed some comical gaping expression, because that was exactly how I felt. Men who've known me for months don't know the things the tall man said. 

"I have a little barque in for repairs," the tall man continued as if unaware of my dazed expression, "and All-Thumbs is patching her up to his heart's content. Unfortunately a few men fared worse than the _Baker_ on our last job, so I'm in need of new hands. And a new hand that could help me mend the sailors while Victor mends the hull would be welcome."

It was the tone of the words – cool, amused – that first reached me. But the words themselves finally sank through the rum-soaked sand in my coconut. 

Royal Navy officers don't call their subordinates by their Christian names, let alone by nicknames. But the men who raid and rob on the high seas – the scourge euphemistically named the Brethren of the Coast – do. This man was the captain of a pirate ship. 

He smiled and nodded, as if he read my thoughts. "Come and see the _Baker_. Wake your friend and persuade him to join us. We'll have a can of tea and talk."

 _Tea_ – a drink more precious in this place than rum. Any fool would sign his life away for mere liquor. But for good tea, Christ himself would sign with the Devil.

" _Ja ja,_ Jack, go vith kaptain Shear-Lock," Stampf said a little too heartily, gripping a broom in one fist (more often used on the patrons or rats than on the filthy floor). He no doubt wanted his tavern corner back so a paying sailor could use it.

"Jack, is it?" said the tall captain – Shear-Lock? – and held one hand out to help me up while the other pulled Murray to his dazed feet (with seeming ease, even though Murray was a broad heavy man). "You must introduce me to your shipmate here, the one who by rights should be a sailing master."

Murray blinked awake and stared at the man who'd helped him up.

"Murray, we have a berth once again," I said. I returned the smile of the tall striking man. Then I vomited down the front of his neat jacket. 

*** 

The cabin which housed the three of us was well-aired by breezes through the open sides and doorway, sheltered by dark-leaved trees; it eased the dense tropical heat. Beyond lay the shore which doubled as a dock for the tiny island, and a row of lean-tos and shacks hastily thrown together at the clearing's edge, no doubt as land-housing for the crew. 

This site lay in a wee cove tucked away from the broader, more accessible shoreline used by most of the ships that dropped anchor here; the captain – Shear-Lock indeed was the man's appellation – led Murray and myself into the tropical forest and after a prolonged walk displayed this tiny niche in the island's topography. A dark mass loomed through the sparse trees that kept the cabin from resting upon the beach itself; most likely the man's ship. The calls of island birds mingled with the occasional squeal of a wild pig as we passed on a narrow path through the jungle. But as we neared the cabin and shelters along the tiny cove another, unpleasant and familiar sound, grew louder; the moans of men in pain that stabbed through my heart even as the Porpoise's spiced rum clanged in my head. 

Our stop was the cabin, clearly the captain's quarters when he was ashore. Shear-Lock had not lied, and each of us now held a steaming can of fragrant tea provided by a spotty lad of twelve or so who was no doubt Shear-Lock's cabin boy. 

"ABS William Murray, sir," said my former shipmate who stood at attention despite the head-pain he surely shared with me, along with our ragged clothing. Murray, at least, had not disgraced himself before his new captain as had I. 

Captain Shear-Lock nodded, as commanding a presence as before despite the wet stain down the front of his jacket (a too-solicitous Stampf had bustled about his jacket with a wet rag setting the man to rights and given me a triumphant glare). Indeed, Shear-Lock had said not a word before, during or after the unfortunate event. 

I kept my head down and my face buried in the can. I expected a flogging, or at least a blow, for soiling the captain's wardrobe, my due aboard a Navy vessel; some crueler commanders have even killed men for such offenses. Whichever punishment the new captain doled out to me would be worth this moment of bliss; the tea was wonderfully soothing, and tasted of home as the finest rum never could. 

"Mr. Murray," said the captain. "You come from a sea-faring family, second generation I perceive. Your father began his duty aboard a Navy ship as an officer's slave, and so distinguished himself that he won not only his freedom but a commission. Your hands tell me that you know every rope aboard a sailing vessel. Both your and Jack's sparse hair and loose skin bespeak a recent history of starvation and thirst, and both of you show signs of severe sun-burn where your clothes do not protect you – signs that you have been in an open boat. Jack's limp indicates a bad leg wound – self-stitched, no doubt – and your own missing ear and scars indicate a saber duel which you lost."

Murray's stunned expression was the one I'd worn in the tavern when first faced with this perspicacity. No enlightened modern man fears witchcraft, but I shuddered at the thought of looking the tall man in the eye lest my life be played out for him to read as casually as a book. 

"That is all true, Captain Shear-Lock," Murray said, his back still Royal Navy-straight. "Dr. Jack and I were on the _Spider_ and we both took injuries during a battle with a French ship – Jack tore up his timber and I lost the ear."

"The _Spider_ was not scuttled. Why the open boat, Mr. Murray?"

The open boat. Blue. Blue sky, blue sea, the blue of stinking gangrene. Pain, burning thirst, smell of blood and rot and urine. Brownlee ranting, shrieking, held down in his throes until we took pity on his pain and threw him overboard. The blue of shark fins. Blue – the colour of death. 

"Because we were escaping, Captain," I spoke up, and saw in Murray's stricken eyes my own dread and resignation. I prepared to be backhanded for speaking without being spoken to. But only the truth would do here; a pirate chief like Shear-Lock had to know that the men he'd chosen were mutineers and would keep right good company with his band of cutthroats. "We'd prepared this boat for days, hid everything in a canvas. The battle was a godsend – as fast as men were injured Murray and I carried them to the boat and hid them, instead of taking them below for surgery. Murray sustained that saber cut battling one of our own officers as we prepared to free the boat." Mr. Moran, the captain's mastiff, who'd howled us up but not before we'd cut free. 

"Desertion under fire." The death-sentence word passed carelessly from Shear-Lock's lips, and he almost looked satisfied, more like a pedant solving a complicated mathematical problem than a ship's officer passing judgement on his underlings. "It takes nerve and courage to face an enemy – and still more to defy your masters in following your conscience." 

"It did little good, however," I said bitterly, so in tune with the strange man that I did not comment on his uncanny assessment of the situation aboard the _Spider_. "The men died, one by one, of their injuries, of thirst, of the wound-rot – deaths so terrible that I am sure I did nothing for them but prolong their agony when they might have stayed on the _Spider_ and gotten proper Navy burials. Murray and I alone were alive when this island came in sight." 

We'd found the wide stretch of shore that showed a friendly face in this ragged chunk of land. Murray and I had staggered ashore, I'd brought a coconut down with one shot, and we had our first food and drink in days. A few robbed drunks later, we were in the Dead Porpoise soothing our wounded souls with rum. It had been a month – or had it been a mere week or two? – since we'd come ashore. We hadn't been pursued – clearly the _Spider_ 's captain knew we'd sentenced ourselves to death. Woe betide us if we ever crossed paths with Moriarty again.

I finished our story to the captain. "We two were the sole survivors of that open boat. We have been here for a month, recovering our flesh and drinking. I believe it has been a month."

"Five weeks, Dr. Jack," Murray said. "The moon was waxing gibbous the night we found the bay, and it was full last night."

Captain Shear-Lock smiled a little. "Which means, Dr. Jack, that you joined a Royal Navy vessel immediately upon departing your medical studies, and you know little of the trade beyond that of treating its patients – unlike your shipmate Mr. Murray, who has been trusted with the wheel during night- and midwatches."

I nodded curtly. I truly had begun to fear that this man could read my mind merely by looking at me. But this fear was nothing like the terror and loathing that had marked my regard for the captain of my former ship. This man evinced no outward pity or sympathy for the plight he had half-way perceived already – only appreciation for our ability to defy and survive. I was beginning to understand that the traits of men aboard a pirate's vessel would be different from those required of Navy men. I also knew that the Captain's spoiled jacket would not be mentioned again, nor be cause for any punishment.

The pitiful sound of men in pain drew my attention away – a sound with which I was all too familiar.

I stood and looked out the cabana's open door to the clearing. "Your men. The ones who were injured in your last raid." I did not speak it as a question, because it was clear even to dullards like myself. 

I knew that sound, and what had I been able to do in the boat? I'd gotten our little precious water between their cracked lips, had cut away gangrenous flesh from screaming men, and had finally tipped them overboard when death had taken them one by one, ignoring the pain from my swollen leg weeping at the site where my own crude stitches held it together. Murray had tried to be gallant but I'd insisted on sharing the last few drops of water with him. Then we'd taken turns at the oars, hoping to sight land before we ourselves died. 

My stomach still roiled with the rum and my bout of sickness, but the tea and the company had done wonders to transfigure me. And I wanted to prove to Shear-Lock that I was not a useless drunk. 

"Permission to inspect the injured, Captain," I said without looking behind me for confirmation, and without waiting for the formal consent I was out the door and through the clearing to the white sand, hot as a baker's oven. Already I knew that this ship's-captain, unlike my previous one, would not send a rope's-end across my shoulders for turning my back on him to attend to wounded men.


	2. SURGEON'S WORK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Some glimpses of 17th-century medicine.

The first thing I saw as I broke through the undergrowth onto the beach was my old landlady looming over me and glaring angrily, face askew as if drunk on her hidden bottle of spirits. I started back, then laughed despite everything. What had transfixed me was in fact a painted wooden carving of a woman, the figurehead of the ship careened on the shore; this was the _Baker_. The wooden woman's Greek helmet and Medusa-headed shield gave me her true identity – and how oddly in keeping with this odd captain that his figurehead honoured the goddess of wisdom rather than that of love – but the resemblance was uncanny; old Mrs Hudson might have modeled for the chiseler. Several men moved about near the exposed side of the ship, under the direction of a man who called for tools and boards and cursed everyone with equal heat – no doubt the ship's carpenter, repairing the vessel's damage from the last battle.

I turned to the shelters built of branches and fronds that shielded the moaning men who also had sustained damage. Others sat by them, some of them bandaged as well. I hobbled along the row of makeshift berths and from pallet to pallet, asking questions and receiving answers. 

There was nothing surprising here. Battles at sea cause ugly wounds of all kinds. A cannonball rarely takes a life by itself, but it can snap a mast that crushes men or drops them to their death, stave a hull into flying splinters like wooden knives, ignite a fire in the sails and tarred lines. Hand-to-hand combat produces sword and pistol wounds. And wherever a mass of men live cheek-by-jowl in fetid holds with bad food and stagnant water, disease strides among them. 

What could I do? Only what I could. 

Five altogether lay waiting to recover or die: one coughing pink foam, two with broken limbs (one leg and one arm), one with a bandaged head who babbled and laughed like an idiot child ("The eye of London watches you at night, all rainbows and light!"), and a lad whose left arm was bound in bloodied linen and who moaned in delirium. I stood and thought for a moment.

"Well, Dr. Jack?" The tall captain's voice came from behind me to one side. I hadn't heard him approach me. Murray came up and stood near my right side, the one with my wounded leg. 

I turned and made my report. "The man on the far end – Jenks – has broken ribs that have torn his lungs, and nothing can be done for him; it's a mortal wound. Matew's broken arm has a clean set and should mend well enough, but it should be watched meantime. Small's shinbone splintered and broke the skin; the leg will have to come off soon, at the knee. Nothing to do for the man with the cracked coconut – Reskin? – but keep him from hurting himself or others; he may recover or he may not. And Billy, the lad with the hurt arm, needs rum and stitches."

"Which should be treated first?"

"Small and Billy, with all speed." I hesitated. My former captain would have pulled out his pistol and dispatched Jenks once I'd said his wound was mortal. "Jenks is in pain, and will be until he dies. It would be more merciful to end his life quickly, now. I can do that, if you want."

Shear-Lock turned his head to where the coughing, moaning man lay. "He's a man under my flag. I'll let him decide." He strode over and crouched on his boot-heels. "Jenks."

The dying man turned his head and blinked. "Cap'n," he gasped and coughed, more pink blood frothing at his mouth.

"Your glass is run, Jenks," Shear-Lock said. "The doctor says you're to die, and the only question is when and how. Say the word and I'll send you to Nick."

Jenks coughed again, a soft cry of pain following. "Aye."

Before I could offer my pistol (retrieved from Stampf's holding at the tavern), I saw a bright flash of metal and Shear-Lock's hand moving like a snake striking, seeming to hit Jenks in the face and pull back. Jenks convulsed once and was still, with no sound. I bent down but there was no need; Jenks was dead. His left eye was a ruin, marking where the captain's blade had driven in to strike the brain and bring instant death. 

Shear-Lock wiped his long narrow-bladed knife on a rag near the invalid's body. "I was in the midst of the battle and couldn't bind his ribs in time, when Jenks was first wounded. The ribs pierced his lungs and sealed his fate."

So Shear-Lock had been tending his own wounded. Normally the ship's carpenter did a lot of the bone-binding and amputations aboard, but it was very likely that All-Thumbs had been busy trying to keep the ship from sinking and drowning everyone at the time. 

"We have two we can save." I nodded to Murray. "Go ask All-Thumbs for a saw." With Murray away I turned back to the captain. "I'll need a bottle of rum from your personal store." Grog and ale were too watered-down for my purposes.

"I never drink it," Shear-Lock said. "Wink was quartermaster and kept the stores; he was killed during our clash with the _Gloria Scott_. Cartwright, a cask of rum from the hold, double-time." 

The fellow who'd kept watch over the now-dead Jenks, a sparse-bearded youth of seventeen or thereabouts with a face twisted in grief, leaped to his feet and was away in a spray of sand and the odd pebble, throwing an "Aye Cap'n" over his shoulder without looking behind.

"What else will you need, Doctor Jack?" Shear-Lock said, turning back to me.

I blinked, once again aware how comically agape I must look. A pirate captain who didn't drink rum and spoke like a scholar – Shear-Lock was as rare and startling a creature as would be a yellow elephant. "Ah. A flat surface upon which to work. Your knife for now – I've no kit of my own. A torch to cauterise the wounds. Thread, or horsehair, or even silk if it's at hand. A steady hand and a steady stomach beside me would be a great help as well." 

"You will have both of the latter," Shear-Lock said, and stripped off his stained jacket. "I can set bones and bind wounds. I have yet to amputate."

Murray and Cartwright came back at a dead run, the lad clutching a small cask and my old shipmate with a leather bag – which when opened prove to hold not only a fine-toothed saw but a sail-mending kit, complete with needles and waxed thread – and several strong fellows who'd been helping the carpenter, carrying boards and canvas. Since I'd only the badly travel-stained shirt and trousers that had been my attire on the open boat, I had only to roll up my sleeves to prepare, and in that short space the sailors had set up an operating table and laid out the instruments. Cartwright broached the cask.

"Billy first," I said, dousing the saw and knife with the rum and splashing it on my hands. "There's still a chance to save that poor lad's arm."

*** 

The sun rises; the sun sets. Shadows chase each other 'round a sundial. Precise mechanical devices tick off the minutes and hours. To the outward eye and the dispassionate observer, all time is the same. But time is not all the same. 

If a man, for instance, lies in an open boat that reeks of rot and death, waiting for thirst to madden him and for the sun to burn the brains out of his head long before starvation can devour his corpse from within, a day stretches like a lump of warmed resin that has no ending and no merciful coolness to ease the torment. However, if one is to let that same man come to rest in a safe harbour and grimly vow to drink for an entire day, that day – no longer nor shorter than the previous one – is gone in the flicker of a bird's wing and leaves the man no more relieved of pain than he was at daybreak. 

A man may swear an oath to obey his superior Royal Navy officers and uphold the laws of England even in the far reaches of the world, and serve under such men for weeks and months, and in all that long, long stretch of time he may still never understand the hearts and souls of these men whom he calls Captain and Mister and knows to be his betters. Worse yet, his understanding of them may even dwindle away into disbelief and revulsion with the passage of time, and bend his own mind toward defiance, desertion, even dreams of mutiny. 

This same man, on the other hand, may spend the merest portion of a day with a rogue and a thief in the eyes of the law, a paltry hour or two beside him engrossed in the grimmest attempts to preserve a few unworthy lives in the eye of that selfsame law, and find everything changed within him. 

Shear-Lock had not lied about his steady hands nor his stomach. He told Billy he could scream and curse all he liked into the leather belt he held champed in his teeth, and then held the boy down firmly during a barrage of caterwauling whilst I cut away the dead flesh in the powder-monkey's arm wound, doused it in spirits and sewed it shut, and helped the lad to a good dose of grog afterward. 

He asked questions all through my amputation of Small's leg at the knee (Small's head gripped between the small brown hands of a man no higher than my waist whose eyes promised dire repercussions for me should this poor fellow perish), and between the patient's agonized bellows I told the captain how and where to cut in such cases, how to tie off blood vessels, how fast to use the saw and when to revert to the knife. 

"See how God Himself wishes men to live even bereft of a limb, Shear-Lock," I enthused, so pleased at speaking to an intelligent colleague I quite forgot he was my captain in that moment. "A sharp cut directly across the arm or leg causes the blood vessels to close in on themselves to choke off the bleeding and save the patient's life." 

The tall man's eyes fairly glowed in the torchlight as they took in the anatomy lesson. "Extraordinary." The deed done, with Small gasping and sobbing from the pain, he patted the white-faced man's shoulder. "Bravely done, Jonathan. It won't be long before you're stumping all over the deck on the handsome new leg Victor will make for you, and joining your mate Tonga in the rigging." 

Small nodded, and whispered something in a strange language. The little fellow at Small's head, no doubt this selfsame Tonga, beamed a great smile (a startling sight, as his teeth had been filed to points), said something in the same sibilant tongue, and kissed his shipmate's damp forehead. 

Only when I realised that both the captain and myself were smiling at each other like fond fools at this display of comradely affection did I look away and finish my duty of bandaging the leg-stump. My stomach roiled in a way that had nothing to do with the rum I'd stopped drinking only a few hours before.


	3. MY NEW DUTIES

The three of us who'd helped perform the surgeries (four, if one included Tonga's moral support of his shipmate during Small's amputation) were spattered with blood and smelled of the excrescences inevitable during such painful procedures. But both patients lived, the fellow with the broken arm – Matew – was well enough and a sound testament to Shear-Lock's bonesetting abilities, and Reskin the babbling fool lay on his cot and happily allowed another of his shipmates to feed him like a babe in swaddling clothes. 

Captain Shear-Lock looked ruefully down at what had been a neat and clean shirt. "I'll remind the men to save their piss in the chamber-pots – there's a good deal of laundering to do now."

"Do not be hard on Small nor Billy for this, Cap'n," I said. "Reassure them that nothing they have spilled on your person is the worst thing you have worn today from one of your sailors."

Shear-Lock looked sharply at me, then burst out in a high laugh. "Dr. Jack, your wit is as sharp as your skill – and all the more impressive since you were foully drunk when I found you! My observational skills have not deserted me, as I now have two men whose mended bodies speak for your knife-hand. Once I have seen Mr. Murray's work with our sails, I will know how he is to be placed aboard the _Baker_ as well."

Other press-gangs worked with a bottle of rum in one hand and a club in the other…Shaking my head, I removed my own gore-spattered shirt – poor thing, it could hardly look worse than it did after surviving a Navy battle, an escape by open boat, weeks of sun and sea water, and a fat month's worth of tavern filth and vomited liquor. "When we were deep in the thick of fighting and my pistol was not needed, I'd strip to the waist for surgeries. Skin is easier to clean than shirts, and I'd look like an ox-butcher on Market Day at the end of the business." 

Men crammed below, screaming in pain, blood everywhere, not enough sand to roughen the floor belowdecks, I bloodied to the elbows and beyond, the ship rocking with returning cannon-fire. Odd how that nightmarish memory was still sweeter than tending to the flogged-to-ribbons bodies of men who'd wished only a little more water and a little less nonstop work from the twin tyrants who ruled the _Spider_. Or the day I'd spoken in private to the captain, as was my right as ship's surgeon – only to have him choose three men at random to be flogged before my eyes as my punishment…

One of those men touched my arm. I looked up and met Murray's eyes. He was blood-spattered as well but had shown more foresight (or fewer rum-addled wits) by removing his own shirt beforehand. "Nothing wrong with us a quick wash and a sleep won't fix, Dr. Jack."

I nodded; weariness now ached through me. "Fetch a basin of sea-water well up on the shore. Captain, of course you should – " I turned back and saw only a small pile of clothing. "Captain Shear-Lock?"

"There!" Tonga said, jerking his chin toward the shore. "Captain there!"

I turned with Murray – and to our horror saw the pale lanky form of Captain Shear-Lock splash into the dark water that lapped the night shore. 

"Hi! Captain!" Forgetting my weariness after spending a day drinking and an evening operating, I hobbled across the sand as fast as I could, kicking off my shoes, Murray far ahead of me. The moon was still full enough to paint the sand silver and light the foam atop the waves. We dashed past the looming bulk of the careened _Baker_ and splashed straight into the rising tepid water – only to have Shear-Lock pop back up for air, throwing back his long wet hair and laughing.

I was so startled I stood still in the shifting sand and lapping water, staring, and then was slapped with a wall of salt water and bowled off my feet. Panic and fear warred over me; I yelled and thrashed, trying to return to an upright stance before I died – and only when two strong sets of hands gripped my forearms and hauled me upright could I breathe again, spluttering and spitting out water. And only then did I see that the water did not quite reach my navel. Murray stood in his wet trousers beside me, looking just as stunned as I felt. Behind us on the shore, several of the Bakers watched us and laughed. 

"It's clear that you don't know how to swim, Dr. Jack," Shear-Lock said. "Most sailors do not. I, however, do – as do all the Bakers. It is a valuable skill, one I insist my men know, and it may very well save your life."

"Dangerous for a sailor to swim. Sir," Murray said, echoing my own thoughts. "Best just to sink quickly and make an end of it, if one is swept overboard, instead of thrashing for hours in the ship's wake, waiting for a shark or cachalot to devour you."

"Ah, I have my reasons for wanting men to swim," the captain said. His tone was jocular, but he carried also the sound of his authority. "Aboard my ship, Mr. Murray, you will learn to swim. You also, Dr. Jack. And as a man of science, you will learn things about the sea that cannot be gauged by having others fetch you specimens in jars."

The sinking in my stomach was not caused by too much rum this time. I'd had nightmare images of falling out of the boat, left alone in the ocean, bobbing, waiting for death – and being able to keep myself alive a few hours longer by swimming would have only prolonged the misery. But this eccentric man was my captain now, and his word second only to that of God Himself. Were not Murray and I irredeemable Lucifers for defying our first sea-God and his hellish right-hand angel? Yet for Shear-Lock, whom I'd known a handful of hours, I would brave the _profundis_ , and turn my back on seafarer tradition.

"That was exceedingly brave of you both, to attempt my rescue despite your own inability to swim," Shear-Lock said, and smiled more warmly than a captain should. "You will find the water shallow here as a creek in summer. Get some of the blood off you, and then a watch's worth of sleep." With no other words he waded out of the water and back to the shore to retrieve his clothing, his bare skin making him look taller and paler than ever in the moonlight.

My little dunking had removed much of the grime, and a quick scrub with a handful or two of wet sand finished the business. The sand shifted under my feet and my treacherous left leg threatened to give way, but I straggled ashore again and faced a massive fellow who led us to the trees that lined the shore. Hammocks had been tied there, with no shortage of close-growing branches sturdy enough to take one or even two men at a time. 

"Mr. Hopkins, midwatch is yours," Shear-Lock said to another Baker, one of the men working with the carpenter's crew. "Off morning watch." At Hopkins' "Cap'n," he turned back to us. "Now, to your sleep. At morning watch, Mr. Murray, you will be under Victor's clipped wing. Dr. Jack, you to me." With no further words, the captain flung himself into a hammock.

Murray followed his example right quickly, as did I – and my long night's worth of work, combined with the sailor's instinct to seize all opportunities to rest that present themselves, combined to send me tumbling into the arms of Morpheus, cradled by the hammock's swaying arms.

The normal way to rouse sailors from sleep is the sharp 8 rings of the watch-bell that signals them to roll out of their sleeping quarters and hop to attention. What woke Murray and I at the start of the morning watch was a sprightly violin air – which, when we'd both tumbled from our hammocks, proved to emanate from the tall figure at the water's edge, illuminated by the setting moon. 

"He plays the violin," Murray said _sotto voce_. "I don't think this man could surprise me much more."

"If he's slept for half an hour I'll be surprised," I replied as softly. My skepticism on this matter was well-founded. For Captain Shear-Lock of the _Baker_ might be a pirate captain that didn't drink rum, spoke like a Cambridge scholar, could discuss medical matters with ease, and play like a court composer, but in this respect he was surely like all other sea-captains I have ever encountered – they never seem to sleep. 

"We have our orders, Jack." Murray hurried off to the carpenter's gang to present himself to All-Thumbs, who would no doubt catechize the man on his ropes and sails – and who would not be disappointed. 

Soft groans of pain from the shelters, along with Reskin's cackling babble, turned my attention back to the wounded at the same time that the violin music ceased. I'd been given my orders last night, but my duty as a doctor came before following my new captain – and I knew this extraordinary man would agree with me. 

Matew's shelter was deserted, but I heard his distinctive stammering voice near the careened barque; he could chip and barnacle-scrape one-handed until his arm was mended, and was no longer a patient. Poor Jenks was sewn into his hammock and only awaited daybreak for the service – a rare sailor who would be buried on land. Reskin babbled his madness as I passed him ("Humours? Fetid air? Nay, only tiny animals that bring illness, and a lump of mouldy bread will strike 'em dead, ha!"); I was only relieved that his imbecility did not run towards streams of nonstop blasphemy and curses. Small dozed fitfully; Tonga slept alongside, one child-sized hand upon his shipmate's heart. 

Sadly, the most noise came from young Billy, moaning and weeping in pain from his arm, which felt hot as a fever; Wiggins the cabin-boy now sat watch. "Will you take 'is arm, Dr. Jack?" he whispered. 

I spoke to both of them – to Wiggins, barely the boy's elder, and to Shear-Lock who had joined me at some point during my inspection and now stood just behind me in a place that felt as natural as the fading night-sky before the dawn. "Billy's arm is hot but it's not swollen. I'll keep a sharp lookout – but for now he can keep the arm. It's as if the arm is fighting suppuration and it's the fight that makes the heat, not the infection." I stroked the boy's face and thumbed away a line of tears. "If I could only take away your pain, child," I said softly. "Give him a little rum in a small cup, but not enough to make him vomit." I stood, and brushed the sand from my tattered trousers. "I've done what I can for the wounded, Captain. I'm your man now."

Shear-Lock nodded. "To the ship."

I walked away from the shacks, and changed my gait so that in two strides Shear-Lock had passed me and I walked half a pace behind him, heading toward the careened _Baker_. As with Shear-Lock joining me on my round, the move felt as natural as breathing. "You are clearly English in origin, Captain. Yet I see no Union Jack in evidence, either on the ship or flying over your camp."

Shear-Lock never shortened his stride, nor did he turn to give answer. "And to a Royal Navy man such a thing can have but one explanation, and that there is but one word to describe such a ship, and those aboard her." He sounded amused rather than offended or angry. 

"One particular word does rather suggest itself," I replied in the same drolly oblique manner. 

"It is a logical deduction in one sense, but not in another. For language," said Captain Shear-Lock, "should be used precisely. There are a dozen variants on men not of any country's naval fleet who travel the sea and make their living by raiding and fighting. The lowest and most despicable class of these creatures, to which company we belong only in the same way that human beings and weasels both belong to the scientific family _Mammalia_ , are the ones I call 'pirates.' They live by no law save their own greed and evil natures. They steal everything, commit indiscriminate murder and brutalities, and are fit only for a rope."

"So the men of the _Baker_ ," I said, "including myself now, are a different family than the _Mustelidae_ of the high seas."

"We defend English merchants, and bring confusion to the enemies of good William and Mary." Shear-Lock looked up at the bulk of the ship. 

Ah. Not a true pirate, but a privateer – the closest thing to respectability a fighting man could boast outside the Navy. "By depriving Spaniards and French of a few chests of gold, barrels of wine, bolts of Cathay silk, loads of teak, and so forth?"

Shear-Lock laughed at my perspicacity. "Once we have commandeered the vessel, one-half of their hold is ours – and one-half of our take belongs to the Crown. We sail under a Letter of Marque." The steady thump and scrape of the hammers and blades was interspersed by All-Thumbs' heatless cursing. 

I am a surgeon formerly attached to the Royal Navy and no career sailor, but even my unpractised eye could see the small size of the _Baker_ , the sole cannon-sight near the prow. "Captain Shear-Lock, unless you have a truly horrific _jolie rouge_ , it's clear that you do not intimidate your prey. Yet your men are loyal enough to fight fiercely under your command and sustain fatal wounds in your service. Men don't stay on a pi- a privateer's ship unless they receive enough compensation to mollify them." That, at least, was one tick in favour of piracy over Navy life – it was said that such ships were run like miniature Athenian democracies rather than the Roman tyrannies that ruled the men in red. 

Shear-Lock turned, and in the growing light of dawn he put both hands on my shoulders. "Dr. Jack, you can observe from what you see as well as any medical man of my acquaintance. We are not _Mustelidae_ but rather more of the family _Hyaenidae_. Doctor, what do you know of the African hyaena?"

"A beast with a terrible laugh," I said. "Some say a foul mix of dog and cat. A sneaking, cowardly scavenger of others' prey. Some have seen a pack of hyaenas chase away a lion from his kill and devour it themselves." 

Shear-Lock stood before me with a faint smile. He waited until my own smile matched his.

"You provide escort service to English merchants. And," I said as it all clicked together like a wooden puzzle, "you attack other pirate ships to rob them of their ill-gotten booty!"

"Well done, Dr. Jack!" he said heartily. "We are not above robbing an enemy nation's merchant ships ourselves, but in the main we are hyaenas who rob the weasels of their game, and send them to Davy Jones as often as we can."

A pirate captain who had a conscience, a sense of patriotism and duty, and even honour. I had a feeling that I would soon see mermaids sporting in the water beyond the waves, or a cloud of fairies hovering over All-Thumbs' repair gang. Did this fabulous creature keep a dragon in the hold to incinerate his foes as well? 

I continued my musings. "You are a three-masted barque that boasts only one cannon. That means the men are good fighters all, good shots. You rely on speed and agility rather than size and brute strength."

"Which is precisely why I don't press my men the way most Navy vessels do," he said. "Their only qualification for Able Seaman is a man too drunk or clumsy to escape them, and a strong back that learns what a cat is for. I can see much of a man's life in his face, his dress, his stance, and can winnow them without laying a single hand on them. It saves a good deal of time."

We headed not for the ship itself but toward a small driftwood fire built on the sand near her, with Wiggins tending a can atop the flame. I waited until Shear-Lock had seated himself before sinking down and inhaling the tantalizing steam from boiling coffee. A bundle of what looked like books or ledgers lay in a neat stack – the logbook and the quartermaster's records, no doubt. "You told me a great deal about myself upon first sight," I said to the lanky man, shifting my lame leg. "I feared to look you in the eye because of your perception. It's a good thing most sober men of science reject belief in witchcraft these days." 

"Not witchcraft, Dr. Jack, but simple observation," said Captain Shear-Lock. "What would our medieval ancestors make of your own ability to diagnose disease? It is highly likely that they would call you an alchemist or a wizard, and the two of us would be burnt at the same stake." Wiggins gave each of us a tin wrapped in a cloth to muffle the heat; the coffee was bitter and strong, and just what I needed after my hangover and my night of surgery. 

Shear-Lock nodded to Wiggins and the lad was off away to the ship to fetch and carry for the men doing the repairs. "Observation," the tall man repeated when we were alone, "is as invaluable for a commander of the Brethren as it is for a surgeon. It behooves a privateer captain to know the relative movements and location of all Navy vessels in his jurisdiction, and a few shillings for ale will buy you as much sailor-gossip as you need. I also have a few eyes and ears in places unsuspected, and they are more reliable than the most decorated official spies of the Crown."

Shear-Lock took a long drink of coffee and set his tin down on the sand. "This is how I have come to know, among other things, that the HMS _Spider_ , a frigate of the Royal Navy, recently came away from a battle with the French ship _Cimetière_ missing a good number of wounded, including their surgeon, and one of their longboats. 

"Word among the fleet is that Captain Moriarty has accused his ship's surgeon, a Dr. John Watson, of engineering a mass desertion mid-battle and has declared all the missing as deserters and cowards. Any recovered deserters face flogging and hanging, but Dr. Watson has been declared _in absentia_ to be a traitor – and if he is recovered he is to be returned to England to be publically hanged, drawn and quartered."

My stomach, which had been clenching tighter and tighter with every word of Shear-Lock's reveleation, twisted hard into a bowline knot. I set my own coffee-tin down. There was no going back from this, none at all. I would never see England again.

"Dr. Jack?"

I shook my head. "I beg pardon, Captain."

He steepled his fingers together and rested his chin atop them, fixing me with that unnerving grey-eyed gaze. "It is disconcerting to learn that one is condemned to live disembowelment for the crime of having a conscience aboard a tyrant's vessel, is it not?"

I dropped my head in my hands, the horror of the thing overwhelming me, and feeling as if every private thought in my head had just been read by Captain Shear-Lock. I wanted to be angry, but all that came out was a pitiful whisper. "How did you know that?"

"Stampf called you Dr. Jack. For every seafaring surgeon there are a dozen ships clamoring for his services, yet you were drunk on the floor of the Dead Porpoise. Mr. Murray, whose identical marks of deprivation and sun showed that you'd shared the same open boat and therefore were shipmates, has a tattered shirt that poorly hides the scars from a brutal flogging. You yourself, Doctor, have three parallel pale lines on your right forearm – the kind of welts inflicted by a cat o' nine tails upon an arm raised to deflect a blow from either oneself or a comrade. The Royal Navy travels with the lash as its guide and guard, but some officers are fonder of the cat than others. You would surely not have tried to block an honestly-earned chastisement ordered by a captain who is only interested in maintaining discipline. You yourself are not otherwise marked by the cat; you were defending someone else, perhaps Mr. Murray. You chose escape by open boat – a death-sentence 99 times out of a hundred – which tells me how desperate you were to get away from your captain."

Observation. Simple observation. 

"And now I have a true death sentence." I hung my head, the horror of the thing overwhelming me. "Drawing and quartering? I'd have been better off dying from my leg wound and feeding the sharks."

I felt a long cool hand rest on my forearm, covering the three pale lines in my tanned skin. 

"Billy and my rigging masters would disagree, Jack. And you can only face execution if they catch you. Here." Something thumped in the ground before me, spraying sand. 

I lifted my head, and saw one of the ledgers from the stack. 

"You're an educated man, Jack. Your attachment to the ship doubles the literacy rate aboard. Therefore in addition to your duties as ship's surgeon you will keep the _Baker_ 's log from now on, which will relieve me of the task."

I picked up the book and opened it to a random page. There was now enough daylight to read some of the entries – 

**_23 Sep_. Wind NNE, clear.  
 _24 Sep_. Wind NNE. Pirate caravel _Impala_. Engaged. K. Cap. Winchester  & crew. No Bs k'd, 2 w'd. Div. stores, per., sank.  
 _25 Sep_. Wind NE, some rain morn.**

– in a precise and elegant hand. I had a certain writing style to learn, it seemed, with all the bizarre abbreviations used by sailors and ones that must only be used by privateers. 

Looking up, I met my captain's eyes. "I kept a diary whilst aboard the _Spider_. I will attempt to refrain from any poetical turns of phrase in my log-keeping."

"A diary, you say." The captain leaned forward, eyes alight. "But missing or destroyed by now, I presume."

"The mate found it," I said, and rubbed my scarred arm. Mr. Moran, Captain Moriarty's leashed hound. 

"Ah," he said simply. He set down his coffee tin. "It is time to commend Jenks' soul. Wiggins!" The last in a bellow.


	4. IN THE MIDST OF DEATH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A funeral and a discovery.

With the cabin boy reappeared and setting the captain to rights, I set down the logbook and hoisted myself to my feet, brushing the sand from my single ragged shirt and worn Navy trousers as best I could. I followed the captain and the other Bakers up a small treeless hill overlooking the semicircular cove, where a small cluster of men already waited, and where scattered crosses bore mute testimony to this hill's purpose; red poppies fluttered in the warm morning breeze. Jenks' enshrouded corpse lay inside an open grave, already dug – very likely during my sleep, an astounding feat in the night. Murray stood with a brawny, mustachioed man whose left thumb was missing – clearly All-Thumbs the carpenter – and we exchanged looks of acknowledgement. 

Shear-Lock stood at the head of the grave and opened a book. The men stilled; many dropped their heads. "We hereby consign the soul of our shipmate William Jenkins to the Judge of all humanity – and may He prove a wiser and more just being than the mortal men who currently bear that title."

The pirates murmured their Amen. 

As Shear-Lock read the 23rd Psalm, I looked around me at my companions. Unlike the tattered excuses for humanity that had kept me company in the Dead Porpoise for the past month, these tars were in well-mended if motley garments – no Navy-red uniformity aboard this ship. All colours and many styles of coat and shirt and trousers and boots prevailed. Murray's and my own unkempt appearance and ragged dress made us the beggar relations at the table – though Murray now sported a well-kept leather waistcoat which covered the worst sins of his shirt. 

The verse read, two of the brawniest-looking men took up spades and quickly filled in the grave. One thin weedy-looking fellow with a wheeze came forward with a wooden cross fashioned from drift-wood, and planted it at the head of the grave. Most of the men dispersed, many already heading back to continue their duties to the ship. 

I stood at the graveside a moment longer, my head bowed; so did Murray. When I lifted it again the captain regarded us with a cool eye. At that look I knew that he knew we'd been remembering all the men who'd died in the open boat and who had had no grave other than the maw of a shark. "Mr. Angel," Shear-Lock said.

One of the big men who'd dug the grave nodded curtly. "Cap'n."

"You are supervising the dispersal of Jenks' possessions."

"Aye, Cap'n, I am," the man said in the resonant accent heard only in some Caribbean islands. 

"I would ask you to make special dispensation for our two newest babes. As you see, they have come naked into our world, but have already proved themselves." The captain returned to his consultation with All-Thumbs. 

"Dr. Jack, Mr. Murray," Angel said. "With me." His size and voice would have singled Angel out from a crowd, but it was the man's tattoos – broad bands of midnight-blue patterns on his dark skin around his neck and wrists – that completed the image of a private raider. Murray and I followed the man, not speaking, falling back on the Navy rules of not speaking until one is spoken to on a ship.

At the bottom of the hill, in the shadow of the careened ship (where the hull now showed the pale gleam of new wood mending its broken side), there was a large circle of men, with a chest and a few other items in a pile at the center. Some of these men I had only seen at the burial, and a good number I had not seen at all – perhaps twenty, all told. Few of the stares were friendly; as we were strangers to them, I was not surprised. 

"Jenks, our brother in fortune, has fired his last shot," said Angel to the circle of men. "His goods, as well as his share of treasure, are now rightfully the property of his brethren. While most of you were procuring provisions or looking for women the Cap'n went netting, and has brought us back two fine fish. Your names."

I wondered how many of these men had already heard the rumours about the _Spider_ desertion, and its traitor mastermind. "I am Dr. Jack. Surgeon." The men murmured a little. "I am also a good shot with a pistol." That made the murmuring distinctly cheerier. 

"ABS William Murray," my old shipmate said. "Name the lines and the sheets and I can handle them."

"All-Thumbs has had the one during repairs, and Cap'n has been with the other tending the wounded," Angel said. "They do not lie. 

"Before they join us in bloodwork, they receive no share of a shipmate's treasure. But they are to stand in the circle while the slops are divided."

"Fuck, give 'em all to Dr. Jack!" one wag called out. "Me bloody monkey's got a cleaner shirt than that!" The others roared. I couldn't help but join in; his master was right, for I'd seen the little beast.

Angel walked to the chest and the pile of clothes. 

"Boots to Dr. Jack goddamn you," Tonga said, his English having the same sibilant sound as his own language. The barefoot little man certainly had no need of them himself.

"Looks like you've another mate aboard this ship," Murray said with a smile. 

Without a word of dissent – either the others agreed with Tonga or they'd dealt with him before and had no desire to do so again – Angel presented me with the seaman's most valuable item of clothing. (My old shoes, very much the worse for wear, had done me no credit either.) Murray received a handsome linen shirt, very likely the fellow's dress-wear for going ashore. With Murray and I having no part of the division of Jenks' share of privateer booty, we both retreated from the dividers' circle. 

The boots were Jenks' workaday pair – worn and supple leather, stained and scarred but still good stout creatures. They were also, alas, a touch too small for my feet and pinched terribly all over. After trying to walk across the sand and providing unintended mirth for the other Bakers when I tangled up my bad leg, I gave it up and put on my flapping old shoes once again. "Murray, your feet may serve."

They did, and with only a wince here and there Murray soon strode across the sand on his new boots, already looking much smarter in his attire. "Dr. Jack, what of you?"

I smiled a little. Was it less than a day ago I'd only been interested in staying drunk and unseen, sharing the tavern floor with palm-rats and vomit? "I'm already paying my way. A few set bones and pulled teeth will earn me a pair of dungarees and a cobbler's services."

"At least have my shirt for these boots!" Murray proffered his linen.

That I gladly did. Fortunately the shirt was a little tight but not painful to wear as the boots had been, and merely wearing a shirt that was clean and whole made me feel like a new man. 

The rest of Jenks' effects having been distributed to the satisfaction of all, the crew dispersed back to the business of preparing for the return to water. Most disappeared into the trees in the direction I'd taken in the other direction – toward the main port and the town for provisions and water. The others divided into two watches, one to sleep and the other to prepare the ship. 

Murray and I went to All-Thumbs to present ourselves for duty, and found him inspecting the mended hull with the captain. Shear-Lock held a long white clay pipe clutched between his teeth; gouts of tobacco smoke puffed over his head as if from a chimney. This pirate chief had one human weakness, at least. "Well done," he said simply to the ship's carpenter. "She goes back out at high tide, tonight at ten." 

Our respective mentors put us to work; Murray was once again wholly engaged with the rigging-gang of the _Baker_ ; I collected the ledgers entrusted to me, and returned to my own charges. 

Small was doing well enough, though he cursed at the pain and had me help Tonga to sit him upright so that he could finish darning his socks ("This pair'll last me twice as long now, won't it?"). Matew was among All-Thumbs' crew, his arm well-splinted. Reskin continued to rant and rave, but thankfully showed no signs of violence. I could not, however, vouch for his behavior aboard the barque, once it was relaunched. 

But Billy's arm was still hot and the lad twisted with the pain, too tired and worn to even weep. "Keep the limb bathed in cold sea-water," I instructed the grim-faced Wiggins, "or as cool as it ever is in this heat. There are no red streaks in the arm, and I will watch for brain-fever." Again I rested my hand on Billy's head, feeling helpless. Poor child – for child he was, though he did a man's work aboard this ship – to be in so much pain. Sometimes pain was so intense that it killed grown men all on its own, or kept them from sleep till they died of exhaustion. Would I have to take the arm just to end the pain? For this mere lad to die here, to end up in a pitifully small grave on a hill overlooking a tiny cove, surrounded by… 

I sat up so abruptly I sprayed sand everywhere. _Fool! Oh, Watson, you fool twice over!_

"I'll be back within the hour, Wiggins," I cried, "and if God is gracious He will give this lad a second chance." 

I heaved myself to my ungainly feet and hobbled as quickly as I could to the men swarming the _Baker_ like bees around their hive. The queen – in this case, the king – stood and watched the ropes being laid, pipe jutted out before him like an odd white beak. 

"Captain, I request permission to revisit the grave hill," I asked Shear-Lock, whose attention was focused on the rigging. 

"Purpose?" A puff of blue smoke rolled out with the word. 

"To harvest the poppies."

He turned to face me so quickly I had to start back or be struck in the nose by his pipe. "You can make the poppy elixir for the injured?" The eagerness in his voice told me that he knew exactly what had traveled through my mind. 

"Even a poorly-compounded one will ease pain and bring sweet dreams. Give me a man to assist and I'll have it ready before nightfall."

*** 

Oh, you beauty. There it was, swaying beautifully before me, from the pages of _Medicinae Plantarum – **Fig. 12. Papaver somniferum.**_

"Wiggins, find the flowers with the fattest pods and cut them, like so." I demonstrated with my own knife – that is, with the knife loaned to me by the captain, for the only thing that was truly mine was the very shirt on my back. "Be careful not to cut any of the pod itself."

"Cor, Dr Jack, you mean these pretty flowers are full of drugs?" Wiggins looked all over the crude cemetery, which looked much more like a blossom-strewn field than an alchemist's study. 

"There are hundreds of wonderful plants in the world that bring comfort and healing," I said, privately promising myself to restock my medical texts one book at a time – once I'd acquired a set of medical instruments and a decent pair of shoes. "Some are very rare and costly, but some can be found in any grassy field or ditch. A compound made of willowtree bark and leaves eases headaches. For sick headaches, a good strong cup of coffee has proven salutary." I babbled, sinking straight into pedant mode as if I instructed a room of eager first-year students. Wiggins, bless him, continued to harvest poppies and most likely took little heed of most of what I said. 

On the shore the men raced to ready the ship. So too did the pair of us race, a crippled traitor and a cabin boy, moving around the scattered graves and cutting the poppy-heads into a cask. Not a quarter-hour passed before we had as many pods as I could use for now. 

Back down we went, to the shelters. "I'll need a bowl, some boiled water, and the rum we've been feeding the invalids," I said, taking my place beside Billy's moaning form. I picked up the rum bottle, saw how little was left – hardly the amount the child would have taken in a dram-cup – and looked sharply at Wiggins, who coughed and looked away. "Another bottle, then, also." 

The lad was away – like Cartwright before him, in a spray of sand. No need to tell a sailor to be quick or double-quick; as I'd heard more than once on the _Spider_ , "When you own your own ship, you can walk. Until then, every order is on the run – now hop to it!"

Billy's arm was still hot – still not swollen. His cheeks had two dry hot salty streaks down from his eyes; the pain had wept him dry. I gave him a little water, which stopped his moans for a moment. Soon, child, soon. 

Wiggins flew back with the goods, and I set us both to work, to the tune of Reskin's lewd singing and the shouts of the tars rigging the _Baker_. Proper compounding of the drug would have entailed gashing the living pods and leaving them to weep, harvesting the latex, removing and curing the pods. We settled for slashing and scraping out the pods, pounding the mixture with my knife-handle in lieu of a pestle, pouring the water from the tea-can, adding the spirits, cooking it over the tiny fire Wiggins kindled right at my elbow in the sand. 

Into the dram-cup. "Wiggins, lift his head." 

Billy's eyes opened, red from sleepless pain. "Cut it off, cut it off, please goddammit cut it off," he whispered, hoarse from his cries. 

"I will, if this doesn't work," I promised. "This will taste nasty, but it should make the pain better."

Billy gulped the stuff down, cursed, and drank some grog after it. 

"How long does it take?" Wiggins said, staring at the evil-looking stuff in the tin and the saw lying in the sand. 

I picked up the logbook to study it beside the boy's cot. "Let us wait an hour. If the pain remains, I'll take his arm."

***

I hobbled to the ship. "Permission to assist the riggers, Captain."

Shear-Lock turned and looked at me. His shoulders dropped a fraction. "The poppy mixture worked." 

I suspect that even a dullard of a captain could not but have noticed my air of pride and triumph. "Billy is sleeping sound and carefree as the babe he is. He nearly wept again when the pain went away. Wiggins is watching the invalids and will notify me if any other trouble presents itself. The log has been up-dated." I held up my hands, palms upward. "I'm a member of your crew. Put me to work with the riggers."

I almost jumped when both long cool hands covered my palms – not in a manly grip but as if he held a porcelain figurine. But the look in his cool grey eyes was what held me even tighter. 

"You are never to endanger these valuable hands whilst under my command, Doctor. Rigging thickens the fingers and calluses the palms more than pistol-shooting does. There are a dozen other duties that will not damage a prized asset. Present yourself to Mr. Hopkins; he has my instructions for your work as well." He released my hands and turned his attention to the men returning from town with barrels and sacks of goods. 

Following orders I headed to the second mate, who set me to mending the few sheets that had taken damage. But it took more than three hours of plying the needle and palm before the memory of that cool strong grip left my hands.


	5. THE BAKER HAUL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A musical interlude of sorts.

"Young Billy fares better, I take it?" 

At the captain's query I looked up from my cross-legged seat on the sand a brief distance from the makeshift infirmary. I had finished my sail-mending and was now hard at work filling a page of the ship's log with my medical observations and instructions for making the poppy compound. At Shear-Lock's hand I halted mid-rise to my feet and remained seated. Behind him men swarmed the careened _Baker_ running lines all over like a phalanx of tiny spiders enshrouding a massive fly. 

"He should be awake by sunset – he needs this sleep. His arm is still inflamed but not suppurating; I will inform you if it mortifies. I shall not need to give him such a powerful dose of poppy next time – a few drops in his grog should keep the pain at bay without sending him to Morpheus." Answering the question I was not asked, I added, "He can go aboard the _Baker_."

"Reskin?"

I shook my head. "Mad as a hare in springtime. He'd be useless if not dangerous aboard."

"Then he stays here. Mr. Cartwright!"

The youth, now tending Reskin amid the lean-tos, leaped up and scampered to us. "Cap'n! Dr. Jack."

"It's the Belle Péché for Reskin. Matew and you can see him there with his share."

Cartwright nodded. "That's what we reckoned, Cap'n. I've got his slops and Matew can fetch his share. We'll be back in two hours."

"See that you do," Shear-Lock said pleasantly. "We set sail before midnight. Stay for a drink or a doxy and you both will be abandoned here with no money for weeks. Dr. Jack or Mr. Murray will tell you just how jolly that prospect would be." 

"Cap'n." And he was away in another spray of sand. 

"You could just promise to flog him bloody for shirking, like a proper ship's captain," I said jocularly. 

"Proper." Shear-Lock pronounced the word like a Huguenot saying "Papist." "A proper captain would let that poor madman starve in the gutter. Mad or not, Reskin is still a Baker. We leave him at the Belle. Madame Tita will see that he has a pallet and bread until he gets well, or until his share runs out. She and I transact business frequently, and neither she nor her whores will rob or small-change one of my men, even a madman." His voice was cool, and carried a history that I suddenly wished to hear in full (but not until I could get my hands on a blank diary book and a good stout quill).

"Mr. Small is still in pain, but his leg is healing well," I continued with my infirmary report. "He'll still need to let the stump heal, but Hector the carpenter's mate is finishing up a crutch for him that he can use until he can bear a wooden timber. Mr. Tonga will have to reef without a partner for a few more weeks, but Small should be able to hand and steer, pound oakum, mend sails, holystone the deck, and the usual other duties of an able seaman."

"And once his new leg is buckled on he'll be racing his friend up the ratlines once again," Shear-Lock said. "Excellent. So there's naught to do but bring the two injured aboard to finish their recovery, once we're floating again."

"Aye, Cap'n." I looked at the other men's bustle here and there, illuminated by the red rapidly-setting sun and already-darkening night sky – moving provisions into boats, Cartwright and Matew heading toward us to collect the unfortunate Reskin, running lines to pull the _Baker_ to sea.

"Wiggins!" Shear-Lock bellowed, a deep stentorian roar that was clearly the one that would carry over the deck in the wildest blow. The men stilled at the familiar sound, and Wiggins' head popped upright from where he was attaching a line to a belaying pin. 

"Cap'n!" Wiggins called back – his voice not as deep but with the same low carry that went over the distance. 

"When you have made that line secure, come here at once. You are to assist Dr. Jack with his work on the hilltop. Immediately."

I stared at Shear-Lock, facing toward the ship. I hadn't said the first word of the request I was going to make. Could this man read my mind simply by my being at his side?

A brief pause – a longer pause than was needed for the voices to carry. "Aye aye!" Perhaps it was my imagination, but Wiggins' voice seemed a touch higher and threadier. 

"We set sail at the tide and cannot wait for daylight," Shear-Lock called back.

"Aye aye, Cap'n!" Wiggins promptly called in reply. 

My jaw dropped. Captain Moriarty would have given Wiggins 12 stripes just for that first, brief hesitation in his reply to a command. What mad world did pirates sail through, where captains explained their orders to the most junior members of the crew? 

"It is obvious that you wish to collect more poppies before we leave, Jack," the captain said to me in his normal conversational tone, turning back to face me. "It is what I would have requested of my captain, were I the ship's surgeon. Further, I took note of how many poppy pods were required to dose one small crewmember. Being the new ship's surgeon, you wish to lay in a store of what is available, as solid compensation for the fact that for now you must work with borrowed instruments and wear a dead man's clothes."

"Dr. Jack!" Wiggins' voice called as he pounded toward us, sand spraying from his heels.

"Ah, your dogsbody is here," Shear-Lock said with a little laugh. "Harvest your medicine, and when we are aboard you must show me how you concoct it. But when the bos'n's whistle sounds, you will have four bells to return and board."

*** 

Wiggins held out the cask for my handful of clipped poppy pods, his other hand holding the torch. "How many more, Dr. Jack?"

"All we can carry before the captain calls all hands. You saw how many pods we needed to make the small amount I gave Billy, and there will be others who will need it."

"That was magical stuff. How does it know to do that?"

I laughed a little. "Mr. Wiggins, the greatest medical and theological minds of our age have yet to answer that one. The only answer I have is 'because God willed it so.' Many believe that every single thing in the world has a purpose for being here." I moved around a lopsided cross and swept a couple more poppies in to my knife hand. 

"What, even the nasty things? Hurricanes, sharks, mosquitoes?"

"Perhaps we do not yet know why those things are here too."

We worked quickly among the remaining flowers, intent upon our task and the time we had left. The night sky turned all the colours of the flowers, the green of the grass, the trees into the same flat dark grey. Splashes and calls came from below as the other Bakers loaded the moonlit ship, rowed the wounded aboard, inspected the mended hull for leaks. For now, at least, the ship was anchored and going nowhere. 

"Farewell and adieu, all you Spanish ladies," Wiggins warbled with a slight quaver to his voice. "Farewell and adieu, all you ladies of Spain." The torchlight wavered for a bit. 

Only then did I realise why Wiggins was afraid (for it was not nearly cold enough to cause shivering). I'd been so intent on my work that I had felt never a tremor at our situation – which was that both of us were wandering through a graveyard under a moonlit night. 

"It's all right, my lad," I said. "These fellows buried here are fellow sailors and seamen, are they not?"

"Aye," he said, with just a trace of his voice-quaver. "That'un over there, that was me mate Ben Allford. Last year we'd got here safe after sinking the _Carmina_ , we all had gold, felt like kings we did. Ben got drunk and some fucking bastard cut 'is throat for his purse."

I kept harvesting the pods – the work never stops – but I said, "I'm sorry for your friend." Then I called as if to a living man across the field, "Ben! Ben Allford!"

Wiggins jumped. "Jesus Christ, Dr. Jack, you'll get us killed, or cursed!"

I continued to speak. "Ben Allford. All you men buried here! Stay buried in peace. We are not here to mock you, or desecrate your graves, or to defy the laws of God. We are here to make a drug that will take away pain and bring an easy mind to injured sailors – your shipmates. Ben, your friend may need this someday. Stay asleep, rest in peace." Then for good measure I recited the Lord's Prayer, to which Wiggins immediately added his own voice. When we were done, the only sound was the occasional screech of a parrot or monkey deep in the forest beyond the cove, and the continuing profane cheeriness of the men loading the _Baker_ below. 

"What was that song you were singing?" I asked. "Teach it to me. A Navy surgeon isn't allowed to hang around in the foremast among the sailors and hear these things."

We finished our job under the moonlight. With a task to do and knowledge he held over me, Wiggins was happy for a distraction from his fear. He taught me the verses, until we both sang it at the tops of our voices – though I was the one hard-pressed to restrain the quaver in my voice when I sang the last two lines of the chorus, and thought of my plight, until the piercing bos'n's whistle called us back to the ship:

"For we've received orders for to sail for old England,  
And we may never see you fair ladies again."

###

"Oh we sailed on the good ship _Venus_ ," Jonathan Small trolled. "Goddamn, you should have seen us! The figurehead was a whore in bed, and the mast was…"

Billy was still half-groggy from his dose of poppy elixir and from exhaustion; this did not stop the lad from added his child's treble voice to the obscene ditty. 

I had a choice of musical accompaniment that night – either with the jolly invalids letting me know in exacting detail of the activities and proclivities of every crewman aboard the aforementioned _Venus_ , or at the water's edge where the rest of the crew hauled the _Baker_ back into the depths one long drag at a time, while they bellowed to the steady rhythm of the fiddle played by the Captain, who stood at the spot where the high-tide waters lapped the shore, and to the piercing notes of Wiggins' fife where he stood aboard the ship itself. 

This was a far cry from the same work done aboard the _Spider_. The Royal Navy forbade singing among the sailors during work, fearing that the sound would obstruct commands. A middy's spontaneous chorus of "General Taylor" during a rigging-haul had cost him 50 stripes – the first of the incidents that eventually turned my stolid obedience to my commanders into revulsion for their adamant cruelty. 

I knew of the songs used aboard many vessels to set a rhythm or to make the work more tolerable; this was my first true exposure to them. I'd heard similar tunes, even if I knew none of the words – and this one sounded as if the crew added new ones or made their own as it suited their fancy, a sort of sung history of their particular ship:

**"Hopkins jumped from his old yard.  
 _Way! Hey! Pull for the sea!_  
Cap'n L'Estrade he took it hard.  
 _Pull, you bastards, pull!_**

**"Victor's thumb was chopped in two.  
 _Way! Hey! Pull for the sea!_  
He learned what German steel could do.  
 _Pull, you bastards, pull!_ "**

And so forth. No doubt if Murray and I stayed aboard long enough we would merit our own verses. 

Curiosity drew me down to the shore, not far from where the captain stood, playing the rhythm for the heaving song. The moon was still bright enough to see clearly enough. For a moment I watched the men pulling on the lines that strung the _Baker_ like a fly in a web, standing up to their waists in the water, all pulling in unison, all singing. 

**"The _Sea Wolf_ captain's bald today.  
 _Way! Hey! Pull for the sea!_  
For Shear-Lock stole his wig away ** [here the captain played a swooping, high-pitched chord]  
 ** _Pull, you bastards, pull!_ "**

Even as I laughed at the absurd humour of the song – which at least had the merit of not being as explicitly nautical as the invalids' tune – I marveled at how these men had already managed to haul the barque halfway into the water. I could just see Wiggins standing at the prow, his fife to his lips, keeping his footing through every heave of the ropes with a seaman's ease.

Shear-Lock threw me a glance but did not stop his playing. I had no desire to interrupt either the tune or the work – one and the same. 

**"Tonga came from Andaman.  
 _Way! Hey! Pull for the sea!_  
Half the size and twice the man.  
 _Pull, you bastards, pull!_ "**

Verse by verse, man by man, story by story, the barque returned to the sea, until the _Baker_ bobbed freely in the water, to a rousing cheer by the exhausted men. Wiggins dropped the anchor, and then ran to drop the first of the longboats to receive the returning crew and the provisions. 

Only then did Shear-Lock lower his bow. "There's one small chore complete, Jack," he said. "Now to board and reprovision her. It's time for the hyaena to rob the weasels once again."

I nodded and fingered my empty pistol, still in my belt. 

"Have no fears. If your pistol-work is as good as I perceive it to be, in two days you will share your first prize, and will have more to your estate than a dead man's shirt."

I stared at him – gaped, truthfully. "Two days?" Oh, this man must have a tripod and an oracle hidden somewhere. Any other captain would have said "in the near future" or "soon" – but to point to the day and smile triumphantly?

He laughed at me and poked my chest with the tip of his violin bow. "Close your mouth, Doctor, a bat might fly in. This is no brutal guess, no hubris that speaks. It is the way I work, and the reason such a small and lightly-armed ship as the _Baker_ is the curse of foreign merchants. I prefer to use my coconut rather than a cannonball to defeat my enemies." He tapped his forehead with his bow hand. 

"Every captain must know the wind, the date, his place in the world. But I also know what truth a sailor speaks when he's drunk, and the way greedy cowards think. I know what moves every kind of ship will make before she makes them, in every weather – I have written several small papers on the subject. I know where and when they will appear at nearly every point on their itinerary. I know the kinds of men who pilot the vessels I hunt. Those are my sign-posts, Jack, that lead my brain to the sole spot where my prey will be – where we will be awaiting them.

"Our ship's motto is _Aufero impossible, quod quis somes est verum_."

" 'Remove the impossible,' " I said, translating with the custom of years of medical study, " 'and what remains is the truth.' " I grinned, one end of my moustache turning up. "As a phrase to strike terror into your prey, Cap'n, it seems sorely lacking."

He smiled. "Yet it embodies the very thing that makes me a successful privateer. What was the motto of your former ship?"

The smile slid off my face like figures wiped from a slate. My striped arm tensed; once again I saw the blood spattering the _Spider_ 's deck from Murray's flayed back, the remorseless glittering eyes of Captain Moriarty, the sadistic sparkle in Moran's as he wielded the cat. " _Dolor et metus, dexteram meam et sinistram_." 

" 'Pain and fear,' " Shear-Lock said levelly, as adept as I with the Latin, " 'my left and my right.' Embroidered in white on black, would that not make a splendid Jolly Roger, my traitorous mutineer?"

I couldn't help but laugh humourlessly as we watched the barque in the harbor and the calling men lading boats. There had been a time not so long ago when I had known right from wrong, and precisely where those boundaries lay. "Ach, I've my own cargo to lade."

"Dix! Hector!" Shear-Lock called and strode to the ship without a backward look; the two aforesaid stepped away from their boat to come to my aid in getting the invalids aboard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Spanish Ladies" is a traditional song. "The Baker Haul" is my own invention.


	6. MY FIRST RED-WORK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Pirate."

The _Baker_ was not that different from the _Spider_ in its size and build – indeed, as my shoes hit the deck for the first time I automatically straightened into parade-stance, almost expecting Captain Moriarty to walk along the deck. 

During the bustle and ado of lading the ship and the jostling men heading to their posts, Murray quickly but proudly showed me every line and sheet as if he'd been a Baker all along. "Mr. Hopkins was pleased with my work when we strung the ship to get her back to sea," he said, looking up at the ratlines adorning the foremast. One singular line at the jib seemed to have attached every few feet not canvas but a tangle of curly hair – not hair, I realized upon closer inspection, but wigs. Black haired wigs, white haired, hair in every shade of grey – the line looked almost like the display made by an ambitious peruke merchant. Or, I thought with a chill, like the scalps of Indians collected as bounty by the Puritans in the Colonies. 

Murray was still talking. "I'll be under Hopkins' direct command. And you, Dr. Jack?"

"No doubt the same as on the _Spider_ , reporting directly to the Cap'n – captain," I amended, and laughed a little. 

Murray gripped my shoulder and gave me a stern look. "Dr. Jack, whatever respectability we had died when we got aboard that longboat. We are pirates now, not Navy men, and can only anticipate a length of rope as our greeting if we ever board another English vessel. We have no country but this ship, now."

I nodded. I did not tell Murray about my status as a traitor, or that because of that designation I would be very lucky if I was only hanged if I ever wound up on an English ship. 

"Dr. Jack!" called one of the other men – Dix, a rangy timber-brown fellow – from the boat where I could hear cursing in both English and sibilant island-tongue; Jonathan Small and Tonga. Shaking off my morbid thoughts, I trotted over to help get my patient aboard. 

*** 

For two days we sailed 'round the scattered islands and islets of the South Seas. I saw little of the actual sailing as I was kept busy belowdecks with my patients – Small getting impatient as I changed his dressings and demanding a pegleg so he could get back to his goddamned work in the goddamned rigging with goddamned Tonga, a smiling Billy finally able to return to his chores with his no-longer-inflamed arm in a sling, and the occasional stitching or bandage for the other men from the day-to-day dangers of working at sea. 

I was pleased to find that I had not been ashore long enough to cure my sea-legs, for seasickness is the most miserable thing and makes a man useless for several days. Murray, too, showed not a sign of his temporary landed state in his legs or his stomach. We also quickly adjusted to our new ship's watch-hours, meals and sleeping arrangements. Our work kept us occupied, and the only difference we noticed at first from our Royal Navy vessel routine was the lack of uniforms. My quarters aboard consisted of the shared area belowdecks where the carpenters worked and slept. I had no locker – I had no belongings to require a locker – but my hammock was strung opposite those of All-Thumbs and Hector, while Murray's hung with the other men. As was usual on a ship, only the captain had private quarters. 

Six bells into the morning watch of the second day at sea, the _Baker_ sailed into the curve of a peninsula jutting out from an otherwise unremarkable islet; the captain brought her 'round to face the open sea, then ordered the anchor dropped. "Prepare," he said simply. That, apparently, was the signal for the men to tumble to their weapons and to line the ship at combat stance. 

Preparing to hit the deck myself, I left Small below with a pistol and a cutlass; the one-legged man was sitting up, ready if we were boarded. Tonga stuck a pistol in his belt as well, but he made a sour face and said, "Better with goddamn blowpipe," before heading up to take his place in the rigging.

"He is at that, Dr. Jack," Small said wryly, "but it isn't nearly the reach of a pistol-ball. If Tonga's ever fighting belowdecks you'd best shout 'Friend!' coming down or you'll get a poison dart in your neck." 

And now I stood on the deck. I might have borrowed powder and shot, but the pistol was mine at the very least. I felt a grin turn the ends of my moustache up at the thought of confrontation – not so very strange a feeling to most surgeons, for we must truthfully have a little bloodthirstiness in our hearts to do our gruesome work. 

The sails were reefed, but fluttering in the wind was the strange foremast line, displaying no less than seven flapping wigs. 

Shear-Lock stood at the wheel. "Anchor!" he snapped. The men at the capstan turned, fast, with only the creaking of the engine to accompany the work – no capstan-chantey for this job. 

"Sails!" 

Tonga and Murray threw up the sheets.

We moved like a striking cobra, so fast I had to seize a line to keep my feet. The _Baker_ darted out from behind our peninsula, out into the open water – and directly into the sailing path of a little low grey one-masted sloop, so close I could read the name _Elsie_ at the prow and see the features of the men aboard – right down to the long black beard of their man at the wheel. 

"Fire!" roared Shear-Lock.

Hopkins echoed the cry and the BOOM resonated in the deck. With a _crack!_ the sole mast of the ship crumpled and listed. The men on that ship screamed and scrambled like ants on a trodden hill. We swept upon them. 

"Hooks!"

Grappling hooks flew, and we charged across, blades flying. 

It was a rout, a goddamned rout. The Elsies barely had a chance to draw their dirks before they were at our mercy. And no mercy was shown; "Fucking _pirate!_ " I heard more than one Baker shout as he fired or swung. I headed to the aft-deck to see the black-haired and black-bearded captain aim his own pistol not at me but toward the _Baker_ , and dropped him with my own shot. Cries and clashes belowdecks told me that the party had headed down to finish off the men who'd been off-watch when their vessel had fallen into Shear-Lock's trap. 

Minutes later there was nothing to do but dispatch the wounded and dump the bodies overboard, all but the dying man at the wheel. He was gasping, bubbling blood like poor Jenks, but would have a shorter life – I'd hit him in the throat. 

"Good morning, Captain Slaney," a cool voice said behind me, and the Cap'n stepped up to the dying man. "Very decent of you to adhere to your usual pattern of escape after looting a merchanter on this route. I can show you the very place on my chart where I knew you'd be."

I looked around me in disbelief, at the grinning Bakers, every man Jack of them alive and only a few sporting some minor wounds. Shear-Lock had planned this like a bloody mathematical equation, as if he'd found a way to set his foe to graph and solve it. 

The man looked up, his little blue eyes bright with hatred, snarling through his blood. 

"Another French vessel, was it? Good, that means I can keep the lot – and I do believe there was a considerable reward for you and your crew. Your papers will give proof enough that you are sacked, and Admiral Holmes will pass the word on to the Crown. Your men have raped their last hamlet. Hopkins." 

The first mate headed to the captain's cabin – where the logbook, records, and other priceless documents would still rest unsunk because of our surprise attack. Not an Elsie was left alive to hinder the man. 

"We've given your men all the burial they've earned," the Cap'n said, and his stone-cold voice. "Do you wish to confess? There's still a chance Lucifer will spit you out."

The man only cursed and spat blood. 

The Cap'n shrugged. Then his hand darted, and I saw the flash of his long thin knife. Slaney the pirate captain convulsed and then was still; like Jenks, knifed through the eye straight into the brain. 

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," the Cap'n said. He seized a fistful of the dead man's hair and pulled, hard. Away came Captain Slaney's jet-black wig. "This will look very fetching with the others. Eight ships, now, to my credit."

Then, and only then, with the Bakers cheering and happily bringing up the loads of stolen French merchant's goods, did I understand how Captain Shear-Lock had earned his name.

My bemusement at seeing the Cap'n wave the slain pirate-captain's wig focused abruptly on a growing bloodstain on that arm's sleeve. "Shear-Lock, you're hurt!"

"A wild bullet," he said, dismissing it with a flicker of his long fingers. "I can certainly wait my turn for your minstrations."

"Cap'n, the French have a very fine word – _triage_ – which I will demonstrate for you at once," I retorted. I turned and looked at the laughing men bearing the cargo of the _Elsie_ aboard the _Baker_. Aboard went silk dresses and waistcoats in a whirl of bright colours; sparkling jewelry like cascades of stars; barrels of red wine; casks of glaceed fruits, preserved pheasants, and other dainties. These would have fetched a king's ransom if the merchant had reached his final destination of Martinique or Guadeloupe and peddled his wares to the wealthy planters and their families. "Hi! You lot!" I bellowed.

The men paused in their plundering and faced me. 

"Injuries?" 

"No!" "This little cut? I'll tend it meself." "No fear!" "Not a scratch, Dr. Jack!"

"Put rum on that before binding it," I instructed, pointing to the "little cut" – young Cartwright, who nodded – and turned to face my captain. "There's the proof. You're the worst hurt, Cap'n; you have my full attention."

He laughed, his cool grey eyes sparkling. "It seems, Jack, that I have little choice in the matter."

"No you don't, Cap'n." I grinned back, certain that the same look was in my own eyes. The exhilaration of this quick, violent clash echoed in both of us. "Back aboard the _Baker_ , sir."

"Dr. Jack, you may very well have saved my life. There is no need for 'sir' between us."

I made a dismissive noise of my own as we scrambled back aboard the barque amid the whooping men lowering boats to properly scavenge the _Elsie_ ; Hopkins held the wheel. "Bandaging a small bullet-wound hardly counts as saving your life, Cap'n."

Only when I had Shear-Lock in his quarters did I have him remove his shirt to examine the bleeding tear along the inner flesh of his upper left arm. I whistled as I reached for the rum-bottle. "A hand-span off from where your heart would have met the bullet. You've the Devil's own luck, Shear-Lock."

"I believe you are correct, Jack," Shear-Lock said jocularly, then tensed with the pain as I doused his bleeding wound with the spirits. "Ffff…fornication," he growled between his teeth. 

I laughed. "Billy curses better than that, Cap'n." This man was a whirling mass of colours and lights himself – a privateer chief who could strategise, fight, kill, but didn't drink rum, didn't even swear… "I've found that a good solid round of blasphemy lessens the pain. Go ahead, it's only the two of us. I'll have to stitch this."

He shook his head, lips tight-pressed. 

Ah. It was the way he was. "A drop of poppy, then?"

"Not for this little thing." 

He trembled with the pain but said not a word while I stitched the bleeding, ragged gash in his inner arm. Only when I'd finished bandaging the arm and setting it in a sling to keep it from moving did he speak again.

"I do have the Devil's own luck with me now," said Shear-Lock, turning to look at me, "and his name is John Watson. 

"The only man on the _Elsie_ who shot anything at all in our direction was Captain Abel Slaney, a notoriously deadly shot with that handsome pistol. He was certainly aiming at my heart. If you yourself had not shot him at that precise moment, sending the bullet wide just enough to strike my arm…" He shrugged. "You would be calling Hopkins Captain right now."

I blinked. "Good Lord," was all I could think to say.

He flickered a quick little smile at me. "All in all, my Devil's luck? I believe you have adequately compensated me for vomiting on my jacket."

*** 

"So that is your 'coconuts over cannonballs' means of making your living on the high seas," I said. Captain Shear-Lock and I both sat in his quarters having the tea Wiggins had fetched after I'd bandaged his wound. "You prefer to use a scalpel rather than an axe on your prey." The thumps and shouts of the men loading the _Elsie_ 's goods seemed distant. 

"A privateer can travel in circles where the law in this water cannot," Shear-Lock replied. "Some times it is exceedingly profitable, as you have just seen."

"But you took hull damage in your conflict with the _Gloria Scott_ which nearly sunk you, and you lost your quartermaster during the engagement, and Jenks later." I tapped the open log-book on my knee. "Here it is. ' ** _13 May. Wind ENE._ Gloria Scott _. Engaged. Hull damage, Qmr. k'd, 5 Bs w'd. Shattered GS' prow, fled. 2-gun now 6-gun. No prize.'_** Some times it is unprofitable as well, as I have read and seen." 

Shear-Lock inclined his head, careful not to jostle his bandaged arm. "I miscalculated. We were outgunned. That the _Scott_ carries 4 more cannon than a ship of that make should is now secured in my cerebral library. This strike on the _Elsie_ is not only my duty as a privateer sailing under a Letter of Marque, but my proof to the crew that they may continue to put their trust in my decisions. 

"Jack, there is a saying among the Brethren that a captain is only as good as his men's gold. In other words, if the sailors are unhappy with their prizes under their current captain, they can vote to remove him from his office and raise another in his place." 

It was almost too much to believe, after my time aboard a Navy ship. The rumours were true – pirate ships were ancient Athens in minature. I snorted. "Shear-Lock, if word of this type of governance gets about, it may spread to the land. The Colonies might even decide to raise one of their own as king in Virginia."

Shear-Lock smiled and drank his tea. "That is exactly what Admiral Holmes believes. On more than one occasion he has said that privateer practises cause an unhealthy excitement among the British holdings." 

This was the second time he had mentioned this particular admiral. I only knew the name as that belonging to a flag officer operating somewhere in the West Indies – and a name (among a string of other officers') I'd once heard Captain Moriarty snarl in a rant about the forces keeping him from his rightful rank and place. "Is Admiral Holmes your liaison for your privateer work?"

"He is. I'll inform him of my latest setback and redemption in my next dispatch. He knows my word is bond, and I'd expect him to be the first to shoot me if I ever played him false."

The way he spoke indicated more than mere cool respect, however. There was some history between the two men, I was sure of that. The Captain's refined speech and skills indicated a patrician upbringing and education – possibly a Navy background of his own before he turned privateer. 

More thumps from outside, curses, laughter. "Cap'n, how are your spoils divided?" Curiosity rather than avarice for my own share prompted me. I rather pictured the men forming a queue at the captain's door and having bags of gold or jewels handed to them. 

Shear-Lock sighed. "That had been Wink's duty as quartermaster, fairly to mete out every man's share. I myself stay out of this matter, so I cannot do this. You were among the boarding party today, so you may not perform this duty either. The man for the job must know the crew, their capacity, their abilities, each hand's part of the business. He must not have been part of the redwork. He must be fair and even-handed, with no extra generosity for particular friends nor meagerness towards personal enemies." 

"Hopkins, then?" Hopkins had struck me as a sober, steady fellow. 

"Yes. For now, Hopkins. But as pleased as I am to have acquired a skilled surgeon and a crack shot, as well as a sailing master, I still find myself lacking a quartermaster." He raised his voice only a little to summon Wiggins from outside the cabin to fetch the first mate. 

When Hopkins arrived, holding the logs and ledgers he'd retrieved from the _Elsie_ , Shear-Lock briefed him on his duties; Hopkins' nod told me that he'd already prepared to take on this chore. "Screen the men as you distribute tonight," Shear-Lock said. "See which of them have the likeliest qualifications to assume the duties of quartermaster." 

"I can think of one or two that might serve already, Cap'n," Hopkins said. 

A conference seemed imminent for the captain and his mate. I bobbed my head. "With the Cap'n's permission--"

"Dismissed, Doctor," Shear-Lock said coolly with a wave of his unbandaged arm, whilst keeping his attention on Hopkins. 

I re-entered the ship's waist and joined the general hubbub of the men lading the _Baker_ from the _Elsie's_ belly. It was an eclectic collection amassed on the deck – sailors' personal belongings, carvings, clothing, tools, rope, utensils, kegs of nails, soap, canvas, and other mundane items nestled cheek-by-jowl with the valuables that had comprised the ship's plunder. The _Elsie_ itself was a treasure chest to a ship that needed provisions. Whimsically, I lamented the death of the sloop's quartermaster, as it seemed we required one ourselves – 

"Oi, Dr. Jack!" Cartwright called from across the deck. "Here! Come over here!"

Ah, no doubt someone had gotten a foot or hand smashed between the boats whilst doing the lading, or gotten a gash handling something heavy. I walked through the men, catching my footing as best I could with a lame leg. 

Not only Cartwright was at the fo'c'sle, standing amid a smaller mound of items. There was Angel the bos'n, Gregson the bos'n's mate, Dix, Hector – the other men who'd joined me in the "redwork" of boarding the sloop. 

"You and Mr Murray will join us tonight for better division than a dead man's clothes, Dr. Jack," Angel said, "now that you have both proved yourself under fire."

"But we found this aboard," Cartwright said, beaming, "and we didn't even need to argue. This is for you. Here!" He held out a wrapped canvas bundle, about the size of a messenger's saddlebag.

Curious, I took the bundle. But when I opened it, I exclaimed in delight. It was the sloop's chiurgeon-kit – knives, fine-bladed saws, needles, a flenser, a bullet extractor. Now I felt like a proper ship's surgeon again. 

I looked up at the men. "Now this is a prize. All-Thumbs!" I called across the deck, holding up my parcel. "You may have your saw back – I have a proper kit now!" 

*** 

Four bells sounded, ending the first dog watch. Victor set down his tools (he was finishing up a largish box) and  
I laid my new kit in my hammock before heading to the galley for mess. Suppertime – boiled beef and rice, bread and honey. 

When the meal was done (Angelo, the ship's cook and one of Jenks' gravediggers, had a much improved Billy scouring trenchers in the galley) Hopkins led the crew back up on the ship's waist, where the plunder from the _Elsie_ still lay awaiting dispersal; all the common day-to-day items that had been scavenged from the sloop were already stowed. 

"Our take," Hopkins said. 

I stood and opened the ledger to the page where I had begun my own logkeeping for the ship. "Jewelry, assorted, precious stones, pearls, gold and silver, one small chest. Gold, one small chest, total 231 pieces. Silver, two small chests, total 508 pieces. Wine, two barrels, third barrel staved during attack." The men murmured in sorrow, and for just a moment I pondered the ways of a world where one could slaughter a dozen men but mourn only the loss of a vintage. "Silk dresses, 10; silk shirts, 4; silk waistcoats, 5. Kid shoes, two pairs." And so forth, enumerating the _Elsie_ 's plunder in descending order of value and ending with the crew's slops. 

"Two shares to the captain," Hopkins said. The crew murmured assent, as did I, and I marked the ledger. "One and one-half shares to the fighters." Assent. "One and one-quarter shares to the officers." Assent. "Half-share for invalids." Assent. "The rest, shared in the normal course." Assent. I wrote down the dispersal for each crewmember, and stepped forward to take my division. 

Fifteen gold louis, 30 silver écu, a necklace set about with square-cut rubies, a silk shirt, a pair of silk stockings, a pair of canvas breeches. And when I thought my share was done, I was handed another bundle, held by Hector, the thin wheezy fellow who was the carpenter's mate. A pistol, a splendid instrument fashioned of gleaming dark-brown wood and brass, lay atop a pair of black boots. Both items looked familiar…The spot of blood on one boot-toe focused my eyes. "Dr. Jack, yours was the shot that felled Captain Slaney," Angel said, in the same stentorian tone that reminded me of a judge reading from the bench. "Perhaps this handsome pair will fit your feet."

Once I was back at my hammock (and my new locker, key set in and awaiting me – so that had been what Victor had been working on), I examined my treasures more closely. 

The first thing I did was to pull on Abel Slaney's boots. They were somewhat large for my feet, but a few rags stuffed down the legs took care of the difference. "Now you look a proper Baker, Dr. Jack," said Victor, busy making Murray's locker now, and nodded his thanks for the silver coin I tossed him. 

Shear-Lock had been right; Slaney's gun was a large handsome piece, the type of firearm normally called a "dragoon" or a "horse pistol," although the latter was a drear name for such a beautiful piece of equipment. The grip was of ebony wood inlaid with silver, and terminated in a flared brass buttcap. Heavier than my Navy sidearm, it was perfectly balanced and fit like a dream in both my right and left hands. I grinned coldly at the machine; the last bullet out of this pistol had wounded Shear-Lock, and from now on it would be fired in his defence. 

With my new clothes, surgeon's kit and treasure – my coin-share alone was more money than I'd earned in 4 months aboard the _Spider_ – I'd gone from beggar-relation to man of means in two days, as Shear-Lock had predicted. So this was a pirate's life.

I picked up one of the gold coins and stared at the image of the French king. 

But for just a moment the face before me was not Louis but Captain Moriarty, snarling in my face like a wet and angry cat, and I felt someone walk on my grave.


	7. A PRIVATEER'S LIFE

Thus did Murray and I begin our new lives aboard the _Baker_ , in a baptism of blood and gold. In a space of weeks it was as if we had been with this crew from the beginning. 

The duties of sea-life inevitably separated Murray and me into our roles – he with Hopkins and Tonga (and Small once again, gamely thumping around the deck on his new peg), gradually making the sails his own; I tending the sailors's illnesses, broken bones and clap. The logbooks now carried my stamp, a little less terse and cold than Shear-Lock's reports but hardly the purple prose the captain complained about whilst studying the books with me of a Sunday evening.

**" _23 June_. Wind SSE, rain in forenoon watch. Men injured in GS raid well-recovered. 1 wr'd ankle, 1 syph. C. plans to intercept Dutch merch. _Juliana_ on route leaving Martinique.**

**" _24 June_. Wind SE, cloudy. Met _Juliana_ , ran colours & shot off jib boom. J. surrendered. Carrying gold, silver, sugar, dried _buccan_ , pickled herrings. C. took half cargo & cap's wig, left them all the foodstuffs (prize specs. below). Treated one Dutch sailor w. jib splinter in wrist. No other injuries on either party. Cut ratlines to prevent their pursuit, departed.**

**" _25 June_. Wind SSE, scattered cloud, fair. If all holds well, will be in Sholto Bay tomorrow forenoon."**

The _Juliana_ raid was as different from our merciless strike on the _Elsie_ as night was from day. We waylaid the Dutch merchanter with a show of force, firing a shot at their figurehead and carrying off the bowsprit, and ran up the _Baker_ 's colours – Capt. Slaney's black wig now fluttering among the other perukes. The only bloodied work I did on the _Juliana_ 's deck was to bandage the straw-haired fellow who'd caught a splinter from our sole shot (" _Doe bang, jongeman, ik een dokter_ "). The Dutch crew scowled at the loss of half their insured cargo, and the captain went puffy and red-faced when Shear-Lock bowed before him, said " _Excuus_ ," and then pulled away the man's little grey wig; but none gave us trouble. We left them their lives and possessions save the wig, a ship that required only a few hours' splicing and one minor repair, a sailor in no danger of an infected wound, half their cargo, all their food – and a story about being beset by pirates and living to tell the tale. We came away with another load of valuables, half of which were the Crown's and half ours to divide.

"Nine," Shear-Lock said, tossing the little wig to Murray for adding to the banner, and taking the wheel from Hopkins. "Nine."

"I admit, Shear-Lock, I'm a good deal eased in my conscience about this work," I said, standing beside him. "I feared each of those wigs had been taken from a dead man and marked a scuttled ship full of corpses." My memory of the _Elsie_ swirling into the water, bow pointed straight upward one last time like the grasping hand of a drowning man before sinking below the surface, was still fresh.

"Perhaps, whilst you and Mr. Murray served your duty under Captain Moriarty," Shear-Lock said, "you may have caught word of the fate of the _Joyeux Marie_."

I felt my face contort into a scowl at the memory of hearing the news. "Monsters."

"Pirates. To be precise, the _Elsie_ ," Shear-Lock said calmly. "At least twenty-three ghosts from that vessel alone can finally rest, and bless you for avenging them. _Elsie_ will enrich us a second time when we receive the reward for destroying her."

My head whirled. Then Captain Slaney was – had been – the man responsible for turning the _Joyeux Marie_ – a ship full of noble French families, travelling to their island holdings – into a floating charnel-house and brothel that had not spared the youngest child aboard. When the news came to us, it was the only time I'd heard words of pity spoken for any Frenchmen on a Royal Navy vessel. Many of my shipmates had spoken longingly of tracking down that unnamed pirate ship and lining her in our sights. 

I looked at the tall, steadfast man at the wheel, and forward to the black wig dangling from the colors-line. The _Baker_ had done what the Royal Navy had not; I'd fired the shot, but Captain Shear-Lock had aimed us to perfection. 

My captain's voice seemed to card my thoughts, as steadily as he'd reassured Wiggins of the necessity of braving a graveyard. "Jack, of the nine ships I have commandeered since taking charge of the _Baker_ , the _Elsie_ marks merely the third ship I have treated like Carthage. I despise such ships and such men. Perhaps now you understand the pleasure with which I destroyed them. In the meantime," he said, with a twinkle in his eye, "I do believe it is now your watch in the crow's-nest, Doctor."

"Cap'n." I tapped my forehead and headed to the mast. I might be the ship's surgeon, and quite possibly a particular friend of the captain's – but aboard a privateer ship I took my turn at watch-duty like any other jack-tar. 

*** 

The _Baker_ gradually acquired a quartermaster: myself. The natural way in which I eased into the duties, due to my work as the ship's surgeon familiarizing me with each man and by my scrupulous cargo and division records, meant that I was the natural leader of such work by the end of my first month aboard. Murray, too, became sailing master of the barque with hardly a breath of time. The assigning of duties based on ability and merit alone rather than a combination of longevity, familial influence and politics was one of many differences in privateer life to which Murray and I had to adjust.

Shear-Lock assisted in another amputation when a snarl of lines and tackle during a storm mangled Cartwright's right arm beyond redemption. The poppy-laced rum had the young tar humming during the gory operation instead of screaming into a clenched belt; Shear-Lock was as fascinated by the effect of the drug on the man's senses as he was by the anatomical details I shared with him during the removal.

The two newest babes aboard did indeed take swimming lessons – the crew leant over the railing or in the rigging laughing their fill at two terrified naked men splashing under bladder-floats whilst Hector showed Murray and me how to use our arms and legs to kick, head up, like dogs or horses. Shear-Lock's fiddle rendition of "Drunken Sailor" only added to the mirth we provided. Cartwright whooped and waved his new hook; he was already able to use it to climb the rigging nearly as fast as he had before. An unsmiling Angel stood nearby with a harpoon, keeping watch for sharks. Angel, Small and John Turner refused to join us in the water unless ordered, but some of the other men swam with us, some as swiftly and naturally as dolphins – and during one lesson the captain himself joined us, looking like a great pale eel as he darted through the water. 

One side-effect of this unnatural propensity for swimming I had already noted: due to their occasional immersion in water, not only did the men smell noticeably less foul as a group than an equal number of souls aboard another ship, but they were less riddled with lice, fleas, and the other natural denizens of man. When I mentioned my observation to the captain over tea one evening, he showed me the paper he was writing upon the subject of enforced cleanliness as a deterrent to many shipboard ills. "Ah. Your own reasons for having us all swim," I repeated his own words back from that first evening. "Among others," he said, and said no more on the subject that watch. 

I had Cartwright agent for me when I purchased supplies for the ship; he would go ashore in Port Royal with my list and a writ from the captain for the goods and return with what I needed when it was available. I not only kept the log but a diary once again. As quartermaster I conferred regularly with the captain about crew's concerns and the state of our holdings. 

When the _Baker_ cargo hold was full of our plunder, Shear-Lock made for Port Royal in Jamaica; I could picture him marching directly through the lowering, red-clad Marines brandishing his Letter of Marque while the Bakers carried the chests of gold and silver and gems. (I stayed aboard, as did Murray; both of us were still officially missing and presumed dead and we preferred to keep it that way.) Admiral Holmes always seemed to know, nearly to the day, when the privateer would make his appearance at the Kingston office, and a complement of soldiers would be there to take over the lading of the treasure aboard the next England-bound vessel. Twice in four months he did so.

During the second visit to the port I was belowdecks off-watch when a ferocious boom resounded, making the ship shake. I flew topside with all the other Bakers to see what had happened. 

Another vessel anchored not far from our own was wreathed in smoke and flames. The cries of men aboard her could be clearly heard over the water. 

Hopkins had the glass to his eye. "It's the _Octavius_."

The _Octavius_ was another privateer, one we'd brushed in passing a time or two. Shear-Lock didn't like her captain, a Charles Milverton, but his own code of morals kept him from engaging a fellow private-raider no matter his thoughts on the fellow.

"Did someone fire on her in port?" Cartwright asked, glass to his own eye and his hook-hand steadying the device admirably well. 

"No cannon-smoke, not within shooting range. No one." Hopkins lowered the glass and shrugged. "One of their powder-kegs must have been poorly-stowed and it ignited."

A sail cracked and came down, wreathed in flames. More cries of pain and fear from the ship. 

"Mr. Hopkins," I said. "Give the word and I can go over and assist their surgeon. He'll need it, with such a horrific mishap."

Hopkins nodded. "Cartwright, take him over. Dr. Jack, watch yourself in that hellhole."

When I came back up with my kit Cartwright had the boat ready to lower, and I scrambled aboard. I assisted Cartwright with the rowing, though he insisted that he'd gotten the knack of using the hook-hand to steady the oar and move it. With only a small inner smile at how Shear-Lock would scold me for rowing and possibly callusing my hands, I put my back into my own oar. 

The noise was terrible the nearer we got to the ship. The flames were dying down, but the cries and screams were louder.

" _Octavius_!" bellowed Cartwright. "Ahoy, the _Octavius_!"

A man leaned over the side. "Identify yourself!"

" _Baker_!" I called out. "We've come to help your surgeon with your wounded!"

"Ship's carpenter's dead!" the man shouted back, his voice thick and hoarse with black smoke. "Can you cut off limbs?"

I held up my kit. "I'm a doctor!"

"God bless you sir, come around! Port side's not as bad, we'll get you up from there!"

"Poor bastards," Cartwright huffed, coughing in the smoke as he hauled on the oars with me, round the stern of the _Octavius_ and to the port side. 

Long lines were tossed out to land in the boat. I looked at Cartwright and picked up the rope-end, looking in vain for a hook to attach to the boat. Were we expected to climb the ropes?

Men, two of them, grabbed the ropes at the top and slid down to thud hard into the boat, rocking it. 

"Oi!" Cartwright grabbed the sides, as did I – and that's when the man behind Cartwright covered his mouth with one hand and a blade flashed in the other across the lad's throat. Blood sprayed everywhere.

Another hand clamped over my mouth just as I screamed – the other man in the boat, twisting my right hand up behind my back away from my kit. I could only watch, horrified, as Cartwright convulsed, gurgling, and died in the man's grip. He flung the youth out of the boat, and poor Cartwright had not even started to sink before his fist swung right for my jaw with all the force of a natural boxer. Pain exploded in a burst of fireworks. 

The last thing I remembered before everything went black was the man – his thick rough voice indicating that he'd been the one to hail us – saying, 

"That fucking Moriarty goddamn well better pay us like fucking kings for what he made us do."

I was lost.


	8. I AM ASKED A QUESTION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Graphic depictions of enhanced interrogation.

"Dr. Watson, welcome aboard."

I knew I was dead when I heard the urbane, sibilant tones, as genteel and refined as Shear-Lock's accent but making a knife of ice go down my spine. The left side of my face hurt and felt puffy and swollen – the blow that had flattened me – and my head was pounding as if I'd been drinking the night before. I was sitting in a hard wooden chair, and I could not move my arms. I cracked open my eyes. 

A table at my right, holding an unlit candle upright in a puddle of hardened tallow, as well as a hook, a saw, fine-bladed knives, pincers, needles – my surgeon's kit, laid out on its canvas roll. Other lanterns in the windowless room – my old belowdecks surgery on the _Spider_ , I'd know the smell anywhere – cast a ghastly yellow light on everything. The ship must be on the north end of the Jamaican peninsula, far from Port Royal and Kingston, possibly lying low at Refuge Cay. The men in the boat must have rowed clear around the peninsula like greased lightning to get here while I was insensate.

The urbane voice continued. "Sailors love to talk when they're on leave and in their cups. Surely you knew that, Doctor. A while back, one of my men overheard some Dutch fellow talking about the pirates that took half their cargo, and their decent _dokter_ who'd actually bandaged him after the assault. You may be at sea, Dr. Watson, but your footprints are clear as day. Showing kindness on a pirate ship is as out of place as displaying it for disobedient and mutinous Navy men. I knew you'd survived your escape, and I knew to what pirate ship you'd bartered your soul. I can't tell you how pleased I am that you did not die after all."

I moved my eyes in the direction of the voice.

I was in Hell. There before me stood Lucifer, with his chief demon grinning at his side clad all in blue: Captain James Moriarty, and his first mate Sebastian Moran. 

"You've been a very expensive man to track down, Dr. Watson," Moriarty said, with just a flicker of amusement around his mouth and absolutely none in his glittering-glass eyes. "It's a good thing I plan to make my money back and to spare, several times over, now that I have you."

I finally spoke, and forced myself to be as flat and uninterested-sounding as I could despite the terror and dread hammering in my heart and throat. "You destroyed an entire ship, killed and injured how many men, just to get your hands on me."

Moriarty made the same dismissive hand-wave the Cap'n had often done, which caused a pang of a very different sort in my stomach; I was lost to the _Baker_ , would never see her nor Shear-Lock again. "Pirates. Milverton was happy enough to take my gold in exchange for the 'accident' he arranged on his own ship. He insists on taking equal credit for capturing a traitor to the crown. I'll see he gets the reward he's due, when I hand what's left of you over to Newgate. In the meantime I see a second and third opportunity to profit by this pursuit."

When I'd been the _Spider's_ surgeon I'd remonstrated with this man over his merciless treatment of his sailors, implored him to follow the Biblical passages about compassion and giving the labourer his due as well as the ones on chastisement and servants obeying their masters, told him that better-fed and –watered Navy men worked harder and longer and more than repaid that extra dram of consideration. All with no more effect than if a moth had fluttered between his eyes and the lantern. Words did not seem to touch him in any way. I kept my mouth shut. 

Moran walked to the table set beside the stout oak chair to which I was bound arm and leg by leather straps, and lit the candle. He took up my scalpel, the very one I'd used to excise the splinter from that young Dutchman. 

"You're not going to ask?" Moriarty said, pouting like a child denied a sweet. "You must provide more amusement than this, Dr. Watson. Oh, very well, I'll tell you, since you were clearly too stupid to avoid my trap," he finished petulantly. 

"There's a reward on my head. I was aware of that." My voice was flat.

"There is also a ship's berth to locate," Moriarty said. "I can't sail into Port Royal and engage the _Baker_ before the authorities, what with that Letter of Marque which would make my actions those of a hindrance against the Crown's treasury. Your new ship is extremely profitable for the King, and Admiral  Holmes has had no loss of prestige and advancement due to his association with you." Again the name was spat out of his mouth – pure raw jealousy and ambition in that serpentine voice. 

"Two can play this game. I acquired a privateer ship of my own to liaise and acquire my own associations with profit to the Crown." Moriarty made a disgusted noise. "Milverton is nowhere near as good a pirate chief as Shear-Lock. 

"So the answer is simple. Remove Shear-Lock. Lie in wait at the _Baker_ 's berth, and when she sails in with a full treasure load wipe out every man Jack aboard. Take the treasure. Milverton is rewarded for his sabotage of the _Octavius_ with the command of the _Baker_ and she becomes my ship. Her profits will continue to stream into Royal coffers, and I will be forgiven for my enthusiasm in pirate-hunting that led to the unfortunate killing of a loyal English privateer and his men. My name is the one that becomes associated with profit, and not Admiral Holmes. Holmes descends; Moriarty ascends. 

"Then, and only then, do I sail back to London to hand you over to the executioner, and they pick a clear sunny day to sell nuts and raisins to the crowd that watches you die. Do you know the procedure for hanging, drawing and quartering, Dr. Watson? A good rope-man – and Newgate has very good rope-men – can keep you alive for an hour after he starts his work. You'll smell your own entrails perishing in the fire long before they lop off your limbs and your head."

Moran smiled, and used the scalpel to mime disemboweling himself.

What medical man didn't know the hideous procedure? The traitor's mutilated remains weren't entire enough to be used as anatomy subjects – sadly, often the sole reason my fellow doctors lambasted a form of execution that would have been rejected as excessively cruel by King Herod. The prolonged agony contorted the condemned's face so sharply that the ogrish snarl often remained on the head, leering down at travelers on London Bridge from atop its pike. 

"That scenario is on the provision that I locate the _Baker_ 's berth on my own, in time," Moriarty said. "Or I could simply ask you where it is berthed, and pay you as handsomely as I paid the Octaviuses – your fellow pirates, are they not? There is one loyalty pirates understand, and that is to the one who gives them the most gold. Tell me, receive your gold, and I let you go. You disappear, Dr. Watson, without a mark upon you, and wealthier than you could have ever imagined in either of your lives as a Navy surgeon or as a pirate leech. Live with a new name on some little island, far from England, far from here; buy a plantation and some slaves; marry and have children, grow fat and old; live in comfort, wealth and safety for the rest of your life. 

"Or keep your mouth shut out of loyalty to a bastard of a pirate chief, and go to the sharks a piece at a time until you tell me after all – and come back to London with me to let Newgate finish the job I start here and now.

"Dr. Watson," Moriarty said, in a command voice. "Tell me where the _Baker_ berths."

Moran picked up my left hand, and extended the thumb in a brutal fist. He inserted the tip of my scalpel blade just under the nail, and grinned at me, his eyes dancing with an obscene pleasure. 

_Fff… fornication!_ All the expression of pain Shear-Lock had spoken during my treatment of his torn arm.

Billy had shouted with pain, but had borne it like a grown man. 

Small had whispered comfort to Tonga, reassuring his friend, after I'd sawn off his leg.

I am Dr. Jack, of the _Baker_. I am a Baker. I will die a Baker. The _Baker_ will sail, and Shear-Lock will play his violin and out-think his opponents and drink his tea, when I am in pieces and snarling down at terrified children on London Bridge. I will earn the trust this man has given me from the very beginning.

"The _Baker_ makes its home in a little dock," I said, eyes tightly closed. "Near Port…Go To Hell."

A beat of silence – Moriarty nodding to Moran – and my thumb exploded in a cascade of agony. I shrieked at the pain, tearing and throbbing through that digit as if I'd stuck it in the candle-flame.

*** 

Time. Time is pain, pain is time. Pain slows time, everyone surely must have noticed. Put your hand on the knee of a pretty girl and an hour passes like a puff of a sou'wester. Put your hand on a hot iron, and see what happens to that same hour. 

My throat was raw and ruptured from my screaming in half an hour. My whole left hand was a solid mass of pain, glowing like a coal. The whole hand hurt – even though I no longer had a whole hand to hurt. 

Nail, by agonizing nail. Then out came a hatchet, and Moran began to remove fingers, a joint at a time. At least he'd stopped abusing my surgeon's tools (covered in gore I'll clean them when I get back to the –)

I stopped talking – but there was no silence in that windowless room. I screamed. Between screams I gnawed so hard on my tongue I thought I would chew it in two. Soon they would start on my teeth, just for a change… No. They needed me to be able to talk – and would only wrench out my teeth and slice out my tongue once I'd proven once and for all that I would not do so. First they would destroy both my hands utterly, so that I could never again take up pistol nor knife, and would be fit only to be hanged, gutted, and dismembered like a hog. My life was falling away, one small piece of pain at a time. 

The question never changed. "Tell me where the _Baker_ is berthed, Dr. Watson." I'd gurgle a sound like "no." A nod from Moriarty.  Whack! went Moran's hatchet. Bones crunched, blood flew. Away went another joint of another of my fingers. Another blood-spraying scream, pain exploding in my head and hand like red-hot cannonballs.

Was my hand gone? All of it, most of it? Blood, shattered bones, tendons, meat, an ugly flipper. The words of the voice changed now, steel and cold as before. 

"Tell me, Doctor, tell me – and I will kill you here and now. Tell me, Doctor, and I'll let Mr. Moran cut your throat."

Death. No more pain. No imprisonment in the hold for weeks, wounds festering, until I was handed over to Newgate. Dead. I wouldn't care about Shear-Lock, dead also, the crew I'd tended, all dead. It would be over, all of it. He'd kill me, sweet and clean, save me from the gutter's knife on the scaffold.

I cracked open my eyes, swollen shut with tears of pain, from the blow. Glittering eyes like glass, smooth pale cheeks, intent stare; Moran huffing open-mouthed for breath and sweating as if he'd just been rutting a whore in an alley fully-clothed, eyes fever-bright with his work, splattered with my blood and bone. 

I nodded, head ringing like a church-bell with pain, and let it sag with defeat. My tongue felt like a lump of raw bloody meat. I moved it. "It's…it's…" My voice was a cracked whisper.

Moriarty moved closer. 

And I spat blood on his immaculate uniform jacket. "A sssecret," I hissed, more blood spraying.

Moriarty gave a disgusted look to his jacket. Moran's face contorted in rage, and he brought the hatchet down on the left middle-finger entire. Another screech – but now Moriarty shouted angrily at Moran as well for acting without orders. 

Two nailless fingers, puffed and gashed and throbbing like my heart, still on my hand. _Can't give up, they haven't finished with my fingers._ The left heart-finger still on, for now, which meant I could still get married, wear a fine band of gold.

Shear-Lock flew down the hatch like an avenging angel, sword out, face white with rage. Oh, what a lovely dream, I'd passed out from the pain and bloodloss again. He flew at Moriarty just as the man turned, the blade flashed, and now it was Moriarty who shrieked with pain as blood flew from his eyes. Moran howled and leaped to his own feet, and struck with his gory hatchet at Angel's cutlass. Both stumbled back, fled out of the belowdecks toward the open hatch. Shear-Lock screamed something in German – " _RACHE!_ " – and raced after them both with Angel fast behind him. 

"Up, Doctor, oh shit your hand oh fuck oh goddamn fuck them all..." Sounded like Dix, looked like Dix. Bloodied leather straps moved at last, and I stared at what was left of my arm ( _badly mangled, Cap'n, I'll have to take her off just below the elbow, he'll be right as rain after that_ ). Other hands took hold of me and pulled me upright. More pain, easier to bear, blood rushing to head, feet, whole arm throbbing. Dix, Angelo– I'd dreamed up a whole rescue party of Bakers. 

I turned to the blood-spattered canvas on the table holding my kit (and assorted bits of my fingers), and pawed at it with my right arm. "Mmm. My." Talking. Musn't talk, don't talk, don't tell them.

Angelo swept up the whole kit, wrapping the canvas around it and tipping over the candle, which went out in a spray of tallow. "I've got 'em Dr. Jack, there's a boat, we have to go now!"

Dix simply swept me up in his arms and headed to the hatch. Handed up, caught by other hands, pulled from the hatch. My arm got jostled and the pain stabbed me hard, but I'd screamed enough and I only let the pain come and go unremarked.

Cool night air. Dark. Cries and clashes of metal, thumping all over the deck, splashes in the water. Stars. I looked at them and tears ran from my swollen eyes. I thought I would never see stars again. 

Cries again, signals, whistles, more blades. Blades only? Ah of course, too dark on deck for pistol-work, unsafe, can't see what you're shooting at…

Into another boat. Oh, poor Cartwright, I had to tell Shear-Lock about Cartwright, how I hadn't protected him, we'd rowed straight into a trap, but I didn't talk, didn't tell them. 

Another thump, and the squeal of oars being yanked through locks, pulling away. 

White looming over me. The moon. No, Shear-Lock's face. "Jack. My Jack."

Not a dream. Not a vision to hold close while they cut me away. He'd come for me.

"Nnnothing," I gagged on my bloodied tongue, "tol' 'em nnothing, ssaid nothing, sorry, I'm sssorry," for I was spraying blood on him, the way I'd vomited on his jacket when first we'd met in that filthy tavern. 

Those cool eyes glittered, full as mine. "I know. I know, my darling boy. I know. I know."


	9. THE HAND OF A FRIEND

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Graphic depiction of 17th-century surgery.

The dark, dank smells of bilge; the sullen yellow of an oil-lamp. I was in my surgery belowdecks aboard the _Baker_ , laid on the table like a wounded shipmate. But I floated on a sea of sweet peace, my arm somewhere in a forgotten country, along with all the pain. If plants could be canonized the first one made a saint should of course be the tree that formed the Cross – but the next must be the poppy. 

Something cool on my head; a soaked cloth. "Doctor Jack?" Wiggins' anxious voice. "Your hand – what's left of it – it's all puffed like a dough-nut."

I'd been rescued yesterday. Or two days ago. How many days, hours, in that room? Hard to think, my head was stuffed with gun-cotton. 

Everything shrieked at me to keep my mouth closed, but my sore and bloodied tongue moved in a harsh croak. "Ship, Mr. Wiggins?" 

"Oh, we've everything up to the wind but our pocket-handkerchiefs, Cap'n's putting all speed between us and the _Spider_." Wiggins grinned, showing his tobacco-stained front teeth. "Shear-Lock made damn' sure every man in the rescue party was a fast rower – we were out and away with you before Captain Moriarty could weigh anchor. And that's if he could see well enough, with that pretty cut the Cap'n gave him. He's still hot behind us, but Cap'n's at the wheel and we'll give 'em the slip. Once he's well and truly shaken, we can return to Sholto Bay."

"Sholto Bay." Two words – three little syllables – so glibly spoken by my dogsbody, that would have stopped the pain and let a ship's surgeon keep his hand, words I'd bitten my tongue nearly in half not to say. Even now, I could not bear the thought of speaking them aloud. 

"Hot behind us" – so now it was a race with the _Spider_ among the islets of the South Seas like a rabbit through its warren, half a step ahead of the weasel. 

In the meantime there remained to finish the job with what was left of my hand. I'd lose the whole arm if I waited another brace of hours.

"Can't do it myself, Mr Wiggins," I moaned. "Can't hold the saw." My other hand was weak, shaking; it too had been awaiting its inevitable fate when its non-dominant twin had finally been all pared away. Strength and resolve would be needed to whip off the rest of that mutilated hand and make a clean cut that would heal. I'd done it for others and seen them go back to their duties. So too would I, if I had to hold the goddamned saw in my teeth afterward, but I'd keep saving Shear-Lock's men. But first the rest of the hand had to come off.

"I'll get someone to do it." Wiggins looked a little sick – he was stalwart enough in the red heat of battle, but the cold deliberate infliction of these cuts was more than he was ready to face. "Who'll I fetch, Dr. Jack?"

I knew what I wanted, the last chimaera that had squirmed through my brain, the one thing that had comforted me during the pain and the cool repeats of "Where does the _Baker_ berth?" But the Cap'n had to shake off the _Spider_ ; he had to think of the ship, not of one man. He'd already endangered everyone to save me, and now he needed to put all speed into our escape. I couldn't ask him for this.

"Angel. Send Angel in here." 

"Yessir." Wiggins was away in that second.

I had learned something of each of the men aboard in my duties not just as surgeon but as quartermaster and fellow fighter. Among the things I had learned was that the _Baker_ 's bos'n was called "Angel" because it was the English word closest to his African name. The man was good with every kind of bladed weapon, but held a special fondness for his machete (the one he'd used on his slave-master during his escape to sea); the strange dark tattoos round his wrists, ankles and neck hid the marks where his irons had once rested. He would show me no misguided kindness in the form of timidity; his strength and precision would take my hand off in one clean blow. 

Fever rocked me, rocked the creaking ship with me, the low overhead roof like the lid of my coffin. Everything listed and moved forward smoothly once again. Ah, another dream. I must not sleep, not let the poppy close my eyes; another would hold the saw but I would do the deed nevertheless.

My dream continued, bringing a familiar rustle and stride in through the hatch. But this was not Angel's deep and resonant "Dr. Jack, how keep you?" filling the room, nor his broad dark body that bent over me. My kind dreaming mind had once again answered my prayer. 

He was as white-faced as he'd been in the open boat, bent over me. But his voice had his usual careless tones. "Angel has the wheel and will keep us steady as if on land, Jack me boy. I'll give your hand a proper sendoff." Behind him, Hopkins and Tonga waited. 

So I had not dreamed the little list that meant the Cap'n had given over the wheel. 

"We're being pursued, Shear-Lock," I whispered. "You should – "

"It was easy enough to deduce Angel's purpose when I saw him heading for the surgery. He's our surest hand with a knife, excepting yourself. I knew why you'd summoned him." Even as he spoke, the Cap'n laid out my surgical blades on the canvas-covered table, carefully dousing them in the bottle of rum I kept for that purpose. "It's high time I performed an amputation by myself, eh?" 

"You just want more data," I murmured. Shear-Lock, fascinated with all modern things, was writing an essay with me about new practises in naval medicine. "We're under chase, so quick-time it is."

The first mate and the rigger moved forward, and under the Cap'n's direction bound me tightly to the table with canvas straps, leaving my damaged arm free. Tonga stuffed a rolled canvas belt between my teeth and Shear-Lock tied off my forearm with another strap. The men held me down at head and foot; I was touched to feel Tonga's small hot hands gripping my head the way he'd held Small during his own surgery. 

"Show me with your eyes," Shear-Lock said, taking up a blade and confirming it with my nod. He traced his finger along my forearm. "Cut here? No. No. Here. Here, then."

This was…effortless. The poppy made this feel as if it happened to another man and I merely another watcher. There was a cutting pain, true, but much of it was muffled by the pleasant sleepy fog in my brain. If I must be bluntly honest, my own fascination with watching my own arm become parted from me occupied my mind as well. 

Skin laid open in swift, delicate moves; blood vessels tied off with rum-soaked thread as if they were goatskins full of wine. Flesh parted from flesh, down to the double bones; my sturdy and well-used bonesaw, once more turned against its master. Hopkins made a face at the sawing sounds. Shear-Lock's hands were as deft and precise as they were on his violin. The knife again for its final jaunt through flesh and skin, and there I was as one-handed as many an old salt. Tonga patted my cheek and said something reassuring in his own tongue. In the same deft manner the Cap'n sewed the skin-flap over the stump and wrapped my stump in spirit-soaked dressings as the men untied me. The whole thing had taken less than a bell's call. 

"You've the makings of a surgeon, Cap'n," I said softly. 

His blood-spattered hand trembled as it picked up the flask, as it never had whilst taking off my hand. "But then you'd have to command the _Baker_ , Jack, and you've no stomach for that work," he said jocularly. "Now take your medicine. I've to get us back to safety."

I swallowed another dose of poppy-laced rum. "Thank you, Shear-Lock. I'd hoped you could do this." 

He was still and silent. The men pretended to be deaf and dumb, as they often had to do when the Cap'n and I spoke to each other. "I'd hoped I could present that bastard's liver to you. My truest man, my surest heart – Jack me bonny boy, I swear by every saint in Heaven that he will learn what your lost hand meant to me."

Reassured by that piratical lullabye, I closed my eyes at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter first appeared, in an altered version, as an entry for the LJ comm Watson's Woes 2011 July Prompt.


	10. THE BUTCHER'S BILL

The _Baker_ shook the _Spider_ handily, of course, and we eventually laid up in our cove once we were safe. But in the days immediately following Shear-Lock's first solo amputation I knew little but the blur of pain interspersed with the dreamy lethargy of poppy. 

One of the few things I did notice was that my hammock had been moved to the Cap'n's quarters. I should have protested this blatant favouritism but little save my pain occupied my mind. The privacy of the man's quarters did offer peace, and the splendid view of the curling waves in our wake was a comfort after my torment in that windowless room. My conscience was appeased by the observation that Shear-Lock also seemed to be at ease with my presence and our conversations (the man kept books the way other pirate captains kept jewels, covering every scholarly subject, and our topics ranged from mathematical conundrums to sea beasts to the Church). More than once my nightmares about Moriarty and the hatchet faded before the sweet chords of a violin, and I slept as deeply as any offwatch sailor.

Eventually my slug-a-bed ways rankled, even through the pain; my sense of duty reasserted itself, and I had Wiggins fetch me the logbooks so that I could update our records. I recorded Cartwright's death and my own amputation, and had Wiggins fill me in on the ship's gossip I'd missed while convalescing. 

It was in this fashion that I learned of an altercation between the captain and first mate that required mediation. In my capacity as quartermaster I moderated the conflict; as a physician I prescribed a course of bloodletting; and as a friend I whooped when the bout of fisticuffs on Sholto Bay ended with Shear-Lock standing and Hopkins sprawled (and more importantly, both men alive). As a privateer and a Baker I rejoiced that I was still able to do my duty with one hand gone. 

Dressing took a good deal more thought; Wiggins watched me hop and curse, struggling into my trousers one-handed, but at my request he did not offer assistance. I would not be the last jack-tar who must learn to do all with but one hand. 

I could still hold a knife with most of my previous dexterity – and injuries do not stop on a ship simply because the surgeon has himself taken injury. I had Wiggins or Angel provide left-hand assistance such as steadying limbs while I stitched them or parting a wound a trifle more so I could remove embedded splinters. 

I retained my left elbow and a decent amount of forearm – "the prettiest base for a hook-hand ever I seen," as All-Thumbs put it, when he and Small jocularly welcomed me to their society. We conferred on the best replacement for my paw; most seamen chose the all-purpose utility of a hook, but others such as whalers acquired a harpoon-hand or a knife ("Even heard tell of a chap named Mad Edward aboard the _Burton's Game_ who chose a pair of shears – must ha' been a tailor on land"). When I held up my strong and trusty bone-saw, the carpenter grinned and bowed, and retreated to work on the device.

I continued to berth with the captain; my original unease with this was assuaged a good deal by my own reception by the crew. The first time I'd reappeared on deck after my amputation I was stunned by the bos'n's whistle announcing me as if I was a visiting dignitary, and even more stunned by a round of huzzahs from the crew. Ever since, the men's respectful treatment of me due to my abilities and my position had become near-reverence, second only to their deference to Shear-Lock.

"It's not decent, Cap'n," I said, using my recovering stump to hold the ledger-page open whilst I wrote in the day's heading. "Mr Hopkins is first mate, and I don't want him feeling I've stepped on his toes." 

"Let them express themselves as they see fit, Jack," Shear-Lock said, poring over his chart with the blue tobacco smoke wreathing his head. "Aboard a privateer ship, respect is earned, not demanded out of Navy rank. If you yourself have not observed, I have seen that Mr. Hopkins feels the same. You saved every man on this barque, myself included, by holding your tongue and losing your hand. Only because I know my Jack do I refrain from knuckling my own forehead when you pass me on the deck." 

I stared at him. He met my gaze. He was in dead earnest. 

Stunned by the depths I saw, I turned to a safer subject. "Another strike soon?"

"By week's end." Shear-Lock tapped the mouth-piece of his pipe on the chart. "The _King of Bohemia_. The Woman has an unparalleled ability to load her hold. I've wanted to sink her for years." 

I grinned. "You want The Adder's wig? Does she even wear a wig?"

"If that flaming red hair isn't a wig, I'll just lop it at her ears after I've shot her," the Cap'n said coolly. "The seas will be safer without her bloodlust. No, the trouble will be outthinking her – The Woman is as clever as I am, and not as likely to be completely anticipated."

I'd heard about The Adder – a pirate-doxy who'd risen to command of the brig _King of Bohemia_ , and referred to by most simply as The Woman. Rumoured to be even more merciless and brutal than the usual run of the worst pirates, the Adder seemed to grind her womanliness under her trousered, booted feet to prove herself more than a match for the men she commanded. Shear-Lock would need my pistol during the fracas and my saw afterward. 

The pounding at the captain's door and Wiggins' cry of "Cap'n! Ship off the larbord!" sent us both out at a dead run. It was about four bells of the forenoon watch, sky clear from end to end. 

" _Baker!_ " called a man aboard a small black-painted one-master. 

Shear-Lock eased even before he'd put his glass to his eye. "My eyes and ears." He bellowed, " _Toby_ ahoy! Come alongside!"

The man aboard the _Toby_ – a teak-brown fellow boasting a scraggly grey beard and a ragged blue jacket – scrambled aboard via a tossed line with all the agility of a rigging-man. "Cap'n Shear-Lock, I've the news you asked."

"My quarters," Shear-Lock said, and a single look in my direction let me know to stay topside. 

I was admiring the wooden setting Victor had built for my saw-hand when I heard a stream of oaths that made my hair lift. It was Shear-Lock's voice. Shear-Lock, and cursing at the top of his lungs like the lowest tar on the ship.

I ran, hobbled, stumbled and bit back a curse myself as my raw stump hit a belaying-pin, but I joined the other anxious-faced crew at the captain's door. Just as I debated using my right as quartermaster to simply enter the cabin, the door flew open and Shear-Lock stood there, nearly as white-faced as the night he'd rescued me.

"Jack," he said, voice as calm as the center of a hurricane. "Come in, please."

Curiosity and dread filled my stomach as I came in and closed the door. The scruffy-bearded man sat at the captain's chart-table, fiercely puffing his own clay pipe. 

"Dr. Jack, my surgeon and quartermaster," Shear-Lock said curtly. "This is Captain Sherman, my agent when I cannot safely touch land. Arthur, please let Jack see what you have brought."

"Aye," the man growled, and pushed a small packet of papers over to me. It was an eclectic mix: letters, notes, missives, decrees… I pulled them over and read everything. And before a minute had passed I was cursing just as loudly at the news contained therein:

That the _Baker_ was officially declared a pirate ship, and no longer a privateer sailing under the protection of a Letter of Marque, for harbouring a known traitor – John Watson, the leader of the _Spider_ mutiny.

That Captain Shear-Lock was denounced for his treacherous attack on a Navy vessel, and his murderous assault on a Navy captain who had been doing his duty by bringing the traitor to justice. (Shear-Lock's hand was clearly shown in the destruction of a respected privateer vessel, the _Octavius_ , when it lay at anchor beside the _Baker_.)

That Admiral Mycroft Holmes was being investigated thoroughly, due to his connection with the treacherous _Baker_. 

And that for this and for their services to the Crown in exposing this plot and pursuing the traitor, and their acquisition of a valuable hold (from the _Octavius_ , no doubt)…James Moriarty was named Admiral, and Sebastian Moran made Captain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A more detailed account of the conflict between Shear-Lock and Hopkins (and Dr. Jack's assistance) can be found in the 2-part story [Reparation](http://gardnerhill.dreamwidth.org/2258.html).
> 
> Yes, that Edward aboard a ship named Burton with a scissors-hand is who you think it is.


	11. STORM ON THE HORIZON

"A king is a king," Shear-Lock said flatly. "We're all for the rope now."

Stunned, I stared at the pink stump-end where my hand had been. "This is because you came for me."

"And because you responded to cries of pain from a blazing ship," Shear-Lock added. "A vicious trap from a vicious man – who now has power and prestige enough to command an armload of ships to his bidding. I should have run him through when I'd had the chance, but I was so imbalanced by rage that I tried to blind him first." He grinned mirthlessly as a shark. "At the least, he'll wear my saber-cut under both his eyes for the rest of his life."

"And here's that other thing you wanted, Shear-Lock," Captain Sherman said, pushing over another scroll of paper, as well as a small heavy sack that clinked of gold.

Cap'n took it up, and now he did indeed resemble a shark. "Thank you, Arthur." He opened his locker and pulled out a bracelet, adorned with square-cut rubies as was the necklace from my first share. "For your services and information." This bracelet was not so complete as my own, for I noticed several gaps in the settings – perhaps it had gotten damaged in the fray – but the remaining gems would still fetch a princely price. "Send messages by the usual method if you cannot reach me in person."

"Aye, Cap'n." Sherman grinned, showing what teeth remaining to be heavily stained with tobacco. "The right fellows will know the truth, and will still know the _Baker_ to be the ship to find the solution for their own difficulties. Perhaps it's time you started working for others besides the Crown, if you'll not turn true pirate and work only for yourself. Tell other fellows how to get the job done – for a fee."

"A consulting privateer?" Shear-Lock tapped his chin with one long finger. "A capital suggestion, Captain Sherman. I shall consider it!"

Sherman finally returned to his ship, laden not only with gems but with messages and letters (from the men, but written by me under their dictation). 

When Sherman was away Shear-Lock had me return to his cabin and close the door. Only then did he unfurl the last paper Sherman had handed over so that I could see. "Look, Jack. It's a list of dead men."

I read the list of names, some of which had a single ink-line through them. Only one name was of a man I knew, and that at the top. "Milverton? But he's alive, or so Moriarty said."

"Presently," Shear-Lock said, and his voice was as icy as the _Spider's_ master. "These lined-out names are the men who were killed during the explosion and fire – at least, the ones Sherman knew for a fact to be dead. The others will find other berths and scatter with their pay. But they won't hold on to it for long. Sherman and others are keeping watch in Tortuga and the other ports, at the taverns and brothels. If Davy Jones doesn't find the men first, I will have them all."

The roster of men from the _Octavius_. 

I looked at Shear-Lock, and it was the first time his expression truly frightened me. "Shear-Lock, no. The authorities already believe you struck the _Octavius_ in the first place – for this they will hang you in a cage at the harbour-mouth for the gulls. Most of those men were rank-and-file Jack-Tars, they would have had nothing to do with the plot – they would have been killed and injured as ignorant of why as we were!"

"The authorities may believe me guilty of the _Octavius_ , Jack, but sailor-gossip knows the truth." Still icy as an Arctic floe. "I regret the need to turn murderer, but I need to send a message of my own now, quickly. When I am done, no pirate nor privateer dast work for Moriarty again, for any amount of gold." He looked at me and for the first time flickered a small icy grin. "If I am to be hanged, my dear doctor, I prefer to have earned it."

In an awful, cold-blooded fashion, he was…right. Shear-Lock was of the Brethren, and needed to let the Brethren know the cost of working with the treacherous new Admiral. He'd sealed his fate by rescuing me, just as I'd sealed my fate by showing compassion to a Juliana sailor – and he could only begin to regain his footing by a show of bloody-minded ruthlessness. The world is upside-down, the world is inside-out. 

I hung my head, staring sightlessly at the chart still spread over the table. "So, we shan't be striking the _King of Bohemia_ after all."

"Tragically, The Woman lives to rob and kill another day. For now, I have to set my mind to a larger problem. But in the meantime, a small bit of good news." His tone lighter, Shear-Lock took up the small heavy bag of gold and pushed it over to me. "Sherman sent us our reward for sinking the _Elsie_ – see how long governments take to enact due process, Quartermaster! See that even shares go among the crew for this."

I'd been dismissed, and knew it. I tapped my forehead with my stump, which always made his expression warmer, and departed with the prize. 

***

All-Thumbs had me try on my new appendage. No mere wooden housing with a strap to bind it to the forearm, this device boasted a complex leather harness that went 'round elbow and shoulder for a solid, tight hold. "Fit yer stump in there, strap over the shoulder, buckle just so. Now!"

My faithful old saw had been sharpened and polished to a fare-thee-well; it gleamed as I turned my new "hand" this way and that. "Someone bring me a bone," I cried. 

Billy dashed into the galley and returned with a great joint from the ham Angelo was shredding into the bean stew for supper. "Got one, Dr. Jack!" he cried, waving the item in one hand – and I felt great professional pleasure at seeing that it was his formerly-injured arm. 

I set my right hand on the steaming thing, angled the saw – and it was as steady and sure as if I held it in my hand. The straps held firm as I worked my way through the bone, and by bending or unbending the elbow I could even control it a bit. The ham-bone was sawn through, in nearly my usual time. The men whooped and I barely restrained myself from whooping with them as I wiped the blade clean with a rag. I was Dr. Jack once again. 

"Oh, this needs a few more things done before I give it you proper, Dr. Jack," All-Thumbs said, face apologetic. "I'll need it a day or two more, but then you'll have it."

It seemed perfect, and already I disliked removing it – but I unstrapped the saw and handed it back to the carpenter. He was right that something extra needed doing, for I heard his hammer working relentlessly for two nights. 

The next morning after that we dropped anchor in Sholto Bay – far earlier and with an emptier hold than we normally did. The crew knew something had changed. 

Shear-Lock ordered us to make preparations for a feast. Hopkins, Dix and Hector went to the taverns and came back with two barrels of beer, a barrel of rum, and five grinning brothel-wenches (already adorned with the gems that had paid handsomely for their services); Matew, Tonga and Angelo went into the jungle (with two pistols and a blow-pipe) and re-emerged with several wild pigs slung on poles between them. Others collected coconuts and the strange fruits that grow in the South Seas – mango, guava, banana. Small and Angel chummed the water near the _Baker_ with galley offal, and harpooned a five-foot shark – "Never et one of these, Doctor? You're in for a treat!" – which joined the pigs in the underground ovens full of hot stones and wet leaves, buried with sand.

As my association with Shear-Lock had inured me to his unusual ways, I was not surprised that the _Baker_ 's captain greeted the whores as courteously as if they were visiting ladies; I was surprised, however, when he went off with all five of them to the little cabin he kept on land and did not emerge for nearly an hour. 

The sky darkened with the brief dusk of the southern lands; torches were stuck in the sand to provide light. Delicious steam arose from the pit-ovens, and my stomach rumbled in anticipation. The entire complement of the _Baker_ sat in the sand, several of them already snuggling with the women – myself included (Annie, a dark-skinned, pox-scarred doxy missing her front teeth and stroking my arm-stump in a highly suggestive manner). But when Shear-Lock rose to his feet and indicated that we were to remain seated, I knew the time had come.

"Bakers," Shear-Lock said. "Business before pleasure. I fear the news I bring will give you little stomach for the victuals and drink before us, but you must hear the truth cold-sober." He then related the news provided by Sherman, without using my old name. 

The men stilled as he spoke, and then grew angry, cursing and thumping the sand with their fists. Several of the men looked at me with a less-than-friendly stare, as they had at the very beginning, and my heart sank. The whores listened and nodded, faces serious, and I suddenly knew: These girls were Shear-Lock's spies in the taverns and houses, and had very likely been making their reports in the cabin. 

"Our raids will be more dangerous, as we no longer sail under the protection of a Letter of Marque," said Shear-Lock. "They may become less profitable as well. 

"Because of Moriarty's reach, I hesitate to offer you the freedom to leave. There will be no guarantee of greater safety away from the _Baker_ – and if the Admiral puts a bounty on any Baker brought in your new shipmates may very well decide you to be more valuable as a ransom-note than as a sailor. Most of you can travel under an assumed name and an assumed ship, but certain of you bear unique characteristics that would make this impossible. 

"There is a very generous reward offered for any who brings Dr. Jack alive into Port Royal, so that he may be taken back to England and executed." A murmur through the crew. Shear-Lock smiled gently at his men, and there was nothing gentle in that expression. "While I am captain, my decision on this subject is not negotiable. If any man wishes to object, we will settle our differences as Brethren – with blades, away from the ship, until the Devil has one of us. I speak not only as one who considers Dr. Jack a valuable shipmate and friend but also as the captain of a marked ship. I doubt the authorities will simply free any pirate who delivers their quarry, especially if that pirate contains information wanted by Admiral Moriarty. Dr. Jack has proven adamant in the face of torture; his captor may not, and the _Baker_ will be betrayed."

More murmuring. My stomach sank. Even if the men refused to turn me in, it also meant that they were essentially trapped on a floating target. 

"You may very well wish to replace me as captain and raise Mr. Hopkins or Mr. Angel in my place, for it was my decision to strike the _Spider_ and retrieve Dr. Jack that has sealed Moriarty's anger with me. By the rules of the Brethren, you may put it to the vote and remove me. However, my protection of Dr. Jack remains, and if the new captain wishes to deliver Jack to Port Royal he will do so only with my corpse buried on whatever island witnesses our duel." 

Angry rumbling. I bowed my head. 

"Any man take Dr. Jack, he is goddamn dead." Tonga grinned with all his pointed teeth. 

"I ain't budging, Cap'n." That was Wiggins. 

"You've played us fair from the start, Captain Shear-Lock," Hopkins said. "If we can't weather a blow like this, we're sorry-ass sailor-men."

"Better here than under that scurvy bitch on _King of Bohemia_ ," Gregson added, and many voiced agreement.

"Or licking Moriarty's boots for a handful of coins," Murray said, his face like a storm and the gold rings in his remaining ear quivering with anger. "Every time I take off my shirt, you can see how he treats his men." 

"New captain'd have to bury me too if he wants Jack's reward-money," Small said lazily. 

All the men piped up. And all in similar fashion. My heart settled, then swelled at this unanimous declaration of loyalty to the captain and to me. 

The captain's sharp gaze was softened for a moment as well. "Then I must prove your trust is well-founded, during the time to come. Thank you, lads, all of you. In the meantime…" and his face cleared and his voice lightened, "I believe All-Thumbs has a gift for you, Dr. Jack."

The men whooped and slapped their thighs with their open hands. 

Unseating Annie from my lap with a kiss and a whispered promise, I rose to my feet and approached the carpenter, laughing. "It's finished! Good, I want to try the saw on that shark we've been…" Gold gleamed from Victor's arms. "…cooking…" I blinked. In the torchlight what All-Thumbs held looked like a huge gold bar, or a bolt of cloth-of-gold. "I thought that was my new hand."

"It is, Dr. Jack." All-Thumbs held out the device, beaming. "Put it on. Every Jack-Tar aboard this ship gave a piece-of-eight to make this."

He'd gilded it. The entire wooden base around the saw-haft was covered with beaten gold. 

Stunned, I pulled my shirt off. (The whores whistled and beat their thighs with their open palms; I turned and bowed to them, to roars of laughter.) I slid my stump into the padded socket and buckled the leather straps. It was hardly heavier than when I'd worn the ungilded version. The saw gleamed bright steel; the base was like the richest, largest gold wristlet ever crafted. 

I turned it here, there – and saw the base. Where the end met my flesh, and embedded in a semicircle, were rubies. Five perfect, square-cut rubies that exactly matched the gaps in the bracelet the Cap'n had given to Sherman. 

I met the captain's eyes. They were as level and cool as ever; his voice amused. "One for each finger you lost."

I met his coolness with my own eyes and deadly grin. "Then soon the Admiral will dread the glint of gold on the horizon." I turned and walked to stand beneath a coconut tree. I drew my Slaney pistol and fired straight up. Down fell a nut – and one vicious swing of my new left arm left a blur of gold and a spray of milk. The cloven coconut thudded to the sand. 

The crew and the women whooped and waved their hats.

"Gold-Hand Jack!" Hopkins cheered.

"One-Hand Jack!" Wiggins piped up. 

"Bonesaw Jack!" Angel called.

"One-Hand Jack will do for me," I said. 

The crew took up the chant of my new shipboard name. "One-Hand Jack!" "One-Hand Jack!" 

And the rumbustification began.

 

**"Murray fled the Spider's trap.  
 _Way! Hey! Pull for the sea!_  
** Makes our lines and sails snap!  
 _Pull, you bastards, pull!_

**"Dr. Jack he lost his hand.  
 _Way! Hey! Pull for the sea!_  
** Showed how Bakers take their stand.  
 _Pull, you bastards, pull!"_

**THE END**  
(for now)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire AU began during the LJ comm Watson's Woes July 2011 prompt-a-day challenge. July 4's prompt was "a non-British holiday"; the holiday I chose was [19 September](http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html) – a.k.a. International Talk Like A Pirate Day – and what I thought would be a single 700-word bit of crack, [A Study In Crimson](http://archiveofourown.org/works/462494), was the result. As I keep saying, it's _Sherlock Holmes_ and _pirates_ – what's not to love? (You can imagine my reaction to a certain comment of Mycroft's to John during the second season of the brilliant BBC modern-dress _Sherlock_ – uttered over 6 months after I started this series.)
> 
> "The Press-Gang" is a prequel to "A Study in Crimson," and it was created daily, over the course of November 2011, for the MiniWriMo Challenge on Watson's Woes. Every segment was in response to a daily prompt. This is the collected and edited version of the story. 
> 
> Other writers' fanfic in this AU:
> 
> Capt_Facepalm on LJ:
> 
> [Sailing the High Seas](http://capt-facepalm.livejournal.com/47295.html)
> 
>  
> 
> Art for this series:
> 
> Darkallie6 on LJ - Darkhenge on DeviantArt:
> 
> [Shear-Lock](http://darkhenge.deviantart.com/art/Shear-Lock-280328422)  
> [One-Hand Jack](http://darkhenge.deviantart.com/art/One-Hand-Jack-278867288#)
> 
> Capt_Facepalm on LJ:
> 
> Artwork: [Bricks Without Clay](http://capt-facepalm.livejournal.com/55863.html#cutid1)


End file.
